There's no system, only entities and flows

There’s no spoon. The famous quote from the Matrix movie impresses a certain interpretation for me.

There’s no system. Everything we call system is just a collection of entities flowing in a certain way.

We have political systems with people as entities flowing by the trend of narratives and sentiments.

We have the system of state with citizens, organizations, and other things as entities with its flow governed by law and economics.

We have physical systems like a spoon where physical entities like matters flow in a certain way based on energy, force, etc.

For now, we have no direct interface to physical systems, so we can only control the flow by facilitating interactions between systems (e.g. by bending the spoon with our hands).

But we have direct interfaces to some of those systems so that we can change it at will. You can change the system of politics by creating narratives and counter-narratives. You can disrupt a nation-state by disrupting its flow of economy or by corrupting its law.

The notion of system is a useful abstraction. But, if you’re willing to look under the hood (to see the entities and flows directly), you’ll be able to see and do things most people couldn’t.