Systems engineering. Systems are resilient, self-repairing, self-organizing. Most lifestyles are brittle. Systems are elastic and flexible.<p>A system is very often a bunch of reinforcing loops, managed by other loops. Hugs are a reinforcing loop. Toxic behavior reinforces too, making things more toxic. Some habits are reinforcing loops - hard work+passion, exercise, showering every day. Most forced habits are not self-reinforcing and these are the habits that deteriorate no matter how hard you try to maintain them.<p>Automation is often not part of a system, and often used as a patch for where a system should exist.<p>What people often do is set up a very stable system. When I go home, my kids jump on me. Apparently that's a better indicator than most people get. Once you have this form of stability in one place, you can set up systems for other things.<p>Communities are also a fairly stable system, but one that needs nurturing. Open source is a community. Bots and agents are somewhat, but the question is if they'll sustain it if nobody sustains them.<p>Same with work. If you're not there, things should not fall apart. Prestigious companies are also very likely to enforce this - if you're a linchpin, then you might not be doing your job.<p>Systems tend to oscillate, things get bad then good then bad. You have a stable system when you're confident that things will get better when bad.<p>Don't use them to abdicate, though. They're there to let you switch as needed. I could give a ton of real world examples, but the post is long enough as is.