The System Is Sick, Too

When you first step into the world of helping professions — whether it’s advocacy, healthcare, education, law, or nonprofit leadership — you carry a deep belief: If you work hard enough inside the system, you can change it.

You clock in. You put in the work. You follow the protocols. You measure the metrics.

And if you’re honest, somewhere along the way, you start to feel it — that gnawing realization: It’s not just the people we’re trying to serve who are wounded. The systems themselves are sick.

I recently watched a video clip that Dr. Gabor Maté uses that brought that feeling into sharper focus. He talks about how those of us working in service professions have been trained — conditioned — to repeat outdated practices, to enforce rules built for control rather than healing, and to never stop long enough to ask: “Is this actually helping?”

And the truth is — whether you’re teaching a classroom, treating a patient, fighting in court, or running a shelter — most of us are stuck inside systems that were never designed for human thriving.

They were built for compliance, control, and efficiency. Healing, growth, and innovation were afterthoughts — if they were considered at all.

Conditioned to Repeat, Not to Evolve

Look at any major system in America — or globally — and you’ll see the same story:

• Education: Schools still largely run on 19th-century industrial models — built to produce factory workers, not critical thinkers. Research from Cambridge University found that 70% of schools globally use disciplinary and grading systems developed over 150 years ago, despite mounting evidence that these systems stifle creativity and emotional intelligence.

  
  

• Healthcare: The Lancet Psychiatry (2020) reported that 78% of healthcare workers experience “moral injury” — the damage caused when systems force them to act against their professional instincts, treating symptoms rather than root causes.Doctors treat bodies but rarely address trauma. Mental health services are tacked on, not built in. (Read my blog on that https://www.codamich.com/post/beyond-burnout-moral-injury)

  
  

• Legal and Criminal Justice: According to the Vera Institute of Justice, our legal system still clings to punitive models first established in the 18th century. Punishment over rehabilitation. Incarceration over restoration. Decades of research show that trauma is a key driver of crime — yet courtrooms still treat behavior as isolated from history.

  
  

• Advocacy and Nonprofits: Even nonprofits fall into the trap. Grant cycles and funding metrics push organizations to prioritize outputs over outcomes. We chase numbers that look good on paper — "clients served," "hours provided" — but when we look up from that paper we're still surrounded by communities in dire need, while systemic transformation sits on the back burner.

  
  

Across every sector, we are operating with tools built for a world that no longer exists.

The Monkey Experiment

Watch the minute long (1:25) video here:

https://youtu.be/y-PvBo75PDo?si=lSCHiAy3ZK4kGJs_

• Five monkeys in a cage.

• A ladder with bananas at the top.

• Every time a monkey climbs, they all get sprayed with cold water.

• Eventually, no one climbs anymore.

• New monkeys are introduced — and they get attacked for climbing, even though no one remembers why.

That’s how our systems operate today.

We stopped questioning. We just enforced the rules we inherited. Even when the punishment makes no sense anymore.

In education, in healthcare, in law — we enforce outdated models with the same robotic energy: ...“This is just how it’s done.”

Meanwhile, the people we claim to serve — students, patients, defendants, families — are left wondering why the ladder never leads to anything better.

You don’t have to look hard to find the evidence that our current way isn’t working:

• A 2022 UNESCO report found that over 50% of school curricula worldwide fails to prepare students for modern economies, emotional intelligence, or civic leadership.

  
  

• The World Health Organization reports that mental health disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide — and that most health systems treat them as secondary concerns.

  
  

• The Brennan Center for Justice shows that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world — despite evidence that punitive justice doesn't deter crime.

  
  

• The Stanford Social Innovation Review warns that nonprofits are burning out staff at record rates because they are forced into survival-driven fundraising instead of systemic change.

  
  

Trauma isn’t just something individuals carry. Systems carry trauma too.

When a system is traumatized:

• It resists change.

• It punishes dissent.

• It clings to outdated rituals even when they harm the very people they’re supposed to help.

A traumatized healthcare system burns out doctors. A traumatized education system punishes creativity. A traumatized legal system locks away healing instead of offering it. A traumatized advocacy world chases funding while forgetting why it exists.

It’s not just a moral crisis. It’s an economic one too.

• The U.S. loses $1 trillion annually in healthcare costs related to untreated trauma and mental illness (CDC, 2023).

  
  

• The economic cost of mass incarceration exceeds $180 billion per year (Prison Policy Initiative).

  
  

• Workplace burnout costs organizations over $300 billion globally (Forbes, 2022).

  
  

If you think questioning tradition is expensive, try maintaining broken systems.

True leadership isn’t about enforcing the same failing patterns harder. It’s about having the courage to admit when the model is wrong.

It’s about asking:

Why are we still doing it this way?

Who benefits from this structure staying the same?

What would real healing look like here — even if it’s messy, slower, and harder to measure?

We are not here to survive broken systems. We are here to rebuild them.

Across advocacy, education, healthcare, and justice, the call is the same:

Stop spraying each other with cold water. Start climbing toward something better.

This blog isn’t just about broken institutions or systems. It’s about our willingness to stop, question, and start again — not with habit, as our guide.

Let’s be bold enough to ask better questions. And humble enough to build something better.

Its long past time for an update.

-Troy Rienstra