Summary Of The Forest The Trees And The One Thing

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In his book, The Forest, the trees, and the One Thing, Johnson (1999) uses Monopoly as an example in order to explain his outlook on what a social system actually is. He does this in order to the five important ideas that make up social systems. Throughout the reading one learns that these five things consist of the ideas that: People and systems have a direct relation to each other in terms of how one influences the other but they are not the same. Systems directly affect how people act and participate in building society by following the path of least resistance, but at the same time without people these systems might not exist. The role we play in the social system dictates who we are as people and how we influence the system. It shows us that that the role we play as individuals affects more than just our own selves. Sometimes, we can even be a part of more than just one system which can cause role conflict (Johnson1999). Johnson incorporates different aspects of the game and its rules in order to explain how society works as a whole. He does this by providing examples of the different pieces that are used, the rules that need to be followed and the values needed to reach the ultimate …show more content…

The path of least resistance defined by Johnson is “[…] it’s what you are supposed to do” (p.41). The rules and regulations of Monopoly are considered to be what is right. Johnson (1999) portrays greediness as one example of a path of least resistance. Being greedy people follow their instincts and do not pay much attention to the disciplinary issues associated with it. This is going against the path of least resistance and is frowned upon by other players. That being said players are most likely to choose to follow the rules to avoid conflict. Therefore the game influences our actions by telling us what is right and what is

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