<p>The success of SSM has delivered great advances in the application of Systems Thinking to real world problems. Yet as we become masters of technique, we become slaves to the dogma enshrined in the process and limitations determined by the available technology. In SSM the transition between Mode 1 and Mode 2 marks the shift from an ontological view of the situation to a multi-faceted epistemic one. However, these two worlds are complementary not exclusionary and rather than taking any one perspective insight comes from their synthesis. There are two integrations inherent in the approach - the meshing of different ideas (perspectives) and of the material with the abstract (reality). Developments in the 40 plus years of SSM are not restricted to SSM, other approaches in Systems Thinking and Complexity Science also employ the dialectic approach of SSM and utilise the switch between the ideal (the domain of ideas) and the real (the domain of material change). The goal of these various methods is to converge on practical options and this process of closure is difficult. In SSM it is kludgy - matrices, different Root Definitions - and difficult to follow. Other approaches have similar difficulties depending on the nature of the approach and the characteristics of the Complexity it seeks to address. To chart progress, we employ SSM to study SSM using Rittel &amp; Webber’s concept of Wicked Problems as a template for the challenge of complexity. We then discuss how new techniques, including LLM’s, can bring new ideas to address the old problem of integrating perspectives and act as a template for a new technological future.</p>