Your past isn't the past, it's probably your operating system right now

Think about who you were 10 years ago. Now 5 years ago. Last year. Last week. You are a complex stack of all your previous selves. When you unpack them, any one might be affecting how you react today.

So you are thinking about your structural stuff.

You are thinking about your relationships stuff.

And you are realising that a lot of the time, the ongoing structural and systemic stuff and the ongoing relationship stuff—which feels sort of structural too sometimes—mix together.

The common factor is that they are currently external to you.

You have some relationships with some people in some situations and subject to some set of structures. You are not those things (or maybe you are if we go all non-dualistic or quantum but let’s not do that just yet, we’re still observing the state our lives seem to be in).

You don’t control those layers although perhaps you have some influence or leverage.

But before we get to interpreting present moments, there is one more part of Human Loops that you should think about or be aware of, and this time it’s an internal thing: your time stack or the layers of your past up to now.

Maybe there are multi-generational layers, as the other Matthew described in his post about his grandfather’s life and economic world, or maybe you realise your teenage relative’s problems are really rooted in some version of structural family poverty.

Very long-term relationships and structural situations.

Maybe there are more recent and still “long-term” layers but something less than “mult-generational”: 10 years of a professional career in some field, 15 years of a marriage, 12 years playing a favourite sport with friends, a major research project.

Then there are the 5-years-or-so chunks: studying for a degree, going from couch potato to marathon runner, learning a new foreign language, starting a new business. Yes, you can make significant progress beforehand but it takes about that long, right?

Five years is also where geopolitical and military strategists start talking about “grand strategy” and grand alliances. World War Two lasted six years. World War One lasted four. Very major and significant efforts and changes to achieve some large goal.

Getting closer, two year layers seem to be next. In World War Two, after the Allies had decided Europe before Japan, then they had to work through the Battle of the Atlantic, or North Africa, and work out how to do D-Day in Normandy (and not some other part of Europe). Major strategic chunks within the larger grand strategy.

On a personal level, this is still new marriage territory, or a new baby, or the start of that degree, or the first decent sales in your new business, the first few marathons. Maybe a new boss showed up a while back at work and now you’re all finally doing things his way, or some significant regulation changed and you all had to adapt.

Or AI started to come into existence..!

And then what about the last few months? How have attempts to put whatever it is into practice been going in reality? Have there been any major recent failures? Is everybody in your group generally coping or a bit stressed? Have the bosses been pressuring for better results since Christmas? Has the enemy or your competitors been out-executing you somehow?

Has your kid’s school situation this year got a bit better or a bit worse? Have you been managing to keep up with payments on your life stuff or are you drifting into problematic economic territory, despite your long-term values and plans?

In both the military and business, these are “campaign” or “operations” timelines.

Then we get down to the last few weeks and days. Maybe there was some upset a couple of weeks ago that is still on your mind. Maybe you caught a cold a few days ago. Maybe you just found out your wife wants a divorce. On the upside, maybe you just won the lottery!

All are versions of “past you” that have layered on top of each other in some relevant ways before you reach the present moment.

All are layers that contain your past memories, experiences, dreams, attempts, failures, relationships, break ups, tragedies, triumphs, identities and beliefs.

The life “programming” or “apps” metaphor works beautifully here.

Maybe you never got around to uninstalling some of them. In the case of traumas you would really rather have forgotten or processed long ago, maybe they just won’t go away.

And the layers can of course be quite different to each other. Over 5 or 10 or 20 or more years, you might have changed your life radically in very many ways: spouse, kids, relationships, countries, jobs, professions, homes, fortunes.

When you reach the present moment, the constant now—because life is always unfolding in front of you—it is always within whatever the structures and situations and relationships are and with all of those layers of previous life experiences.

And all of that, which can be a very complex set of factors indeed, affects how you are likely about to respond to whatever happens next in your life. You are not a blank slate.

These considerations are crucial because the way we react to whatever happens next in our lives—especially if we are not aware of all of these mechanisms—is often a repeating loop or set of loops that started years ago: a trauma from 15 years ago might dictate how you react to your partner tomorrow; a wrong belief formed in your first job because of your first boss can still limit your career choices today.

It’s true for your personal life and true for your teams and businesses.

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Individuals: If you think back through your “time stack” and the “apps” you have installed in “you”, which one is causing you the most problems in life currently?

Professionals: Could you reframe a client’s resistance as “software incompatibility” that just needs a bit of an app update first to get to a new, healthier behaviour?

Systems thinkers: Which past events, decisions or statements in your company or country were clearly new "apps" being installed in the collective "operating system"?

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