Exit Systems To Understand Them

By Leo Gura - December 18, 2025

It is easy to criticize any system from outside because your survival doesn’t depend on it. When your survival is internal to a system, seeing its faults becomes virtually impossible. It is like trying to pull up a rug that you are standing on. Which is why you can never trust anyone inside a system to see or tell you its faults, limits, and corruptions. You do not see the faults of any system your survival depends upon. Understanding systems is not merely an academic pursuit, it requires changing the structure of your lifestyle so your survival no longer depends on the system you seek to understand.

So, for example, you cannot understand science if you survive within it. You cannot understand Harvard if you survive within it. You cannot understand Fox News if you want a career within it. You cannot understand Christianity if your survival depends on it. Deep understanding requires proactively exiting systems — which is the hardest thing to do once you are deeply embedded within it. This is where the most serious development work happens. What scientist is willing to leave science just to understand it? What Christian is willing to leave Christianity just to understand it? Almost nobody does this because it is so emotionally difficult. This is why most sense-making is so poor. And, of course, which system is hardest to exit and understand? Your self.

This is why great sense-making requires courage. A lazy, conformist coward cannot do it.

Exiting systems leaves you all alone, without friends, without family, without tribe, without nation. Most people cannot bear this level of social isolation. They would rather be part of a corrupt system and blind to its true workings as long as they have company. This is why Nazis stay Nazis, Christians stay Christians, and academics stay academics.

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