complex systems:
You think that if you understand one, you must understand two because one and one makes two. But you must also understand and.
—Sufi teaching, quoted in Donella Meadows: “Whole Earth Models and Systems” Co-Evolution Quarterly
When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
Thriving in the Relationship Economy »
authentic relationships, not fauxthentic.
Interdependent multividuality
“The image that your question evoked is that of a single drop of the Niagara Falls about thirty feet into the fall, asking the other drops what measures can be undertaken toward making their continuing fall less chaotic.
Many of the social entrepreneurs that participate here are already engaged in some activity to make the further fall less chaotic. Your question needs to be asked of people who are not yet committed or engaged in implementing a solution, namely to those who are not yet social entrepreneurs, with their zeal for action, and are instead, socially responsible citizens who are looking into the systemic causes of the chaotic organization of all the drops as they plunge over the edge of adult engagement in life.
They would discover that our identity or sense of self, around which the rest of our common conceptual-linguistic interface gets organized is where the system has been and still remains corrupted - since the beginnings of language. With the emergence of language, we began to cease to be individuals, if only because the ratio in each one’s brain of local experience vis a vis second-hand experiences of others kept getting smaller and smaller.
In our time, the knowledge base with which each of us interprets one’s experiences contains but a minute fraction of all the conceptual-linguistic content that informs one’s interpretations. Simply put, we are no longer individuals in the sense that we were from the time before we started getting and accumulating the experiences of others. Rather, we are all different cognitively interdependent vantage points and agents of a single human multividual that humanity has already become.
For such an entity to continue to operate with the outdated and now increasingly false identity of independent individuals generates distortions that reverberate into concerted actions that are cross-purposed, cross-confused, and cross-conflicted. And this is what makes the drops fall as they do. When our (humanity’s) interpretive interface becomes consistent with our integral and interdependent multividuality, the interpretations we make of our experiences, and the choices and decisions that emerge will result in actions and measures that are orderly and harmonious, and the kinds of problems to which you invite solutions in this post – will not arise in the first place.”
Ravi Arapurakal - Wholeecology Strategist
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I’m not sure why the chaos needs to be organized? What’s the human need for control? Is it the metaphor that’s flawed or the action?
“Life is NOT linear, it’s organic. We create our lives symbiotically as we explore our talents in relation to the worlds they help to create for us.”
“Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability. At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence. This linearity thing is a problem.”
“Human beings are incredibly diverse, they have very different aptitudes. […] And it’s not only about that, it’s about passion. Often people are good at things that they don’t particularly care for. […] It’s about passion and what excites our spirit and our energy. If you’re doing the thing that you love to do, that you’re good at, time takes a different course entirely.”
“The reason so many people are opting out of education is because it doesn’t feed their spirit.”
Quoting Abraham Lincoln (Dec 1, 1862): ”The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disentrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
“Love Economy”
I have a crush on this man.
Changing Roles in the Local Food Economy
“The DIY craze has shacked up with the local food movement to produce some inspiring examples of entrepreneurialism: Mason jar magic made by suburban fruit salvagers powered by pedals; workshops on wild-crafting, axe-making, rooftop bees and city-living chickens; lecture series that focus on the how-to rather than just why, when and where; and more.
But we can’t just take pictures of these ingenious innovators for the glossies and call our work finished. We have so much creativity (and cabbage) fermenting at the intersection of craft, food, and agriculture–now we need to connect the dots.
Our spirit and gumption produce marketable ideas and we must distill the unique and visionary experiences into capacity-building structures to create long-term stability for our farmers, eaters, and land. Our pet projects and pop-ups can morph into replicable systems, operations, and communications strategies so our movement can evolve into a true revolution.”
From Olivia’s Sargeant’s post on Civil Eats
On the one hand, there is the belief in the “makeability,” or unrestricted malleability, of future history by means of the planning intellect—by reasoning, rational discourse, and civilized negotiation. At the same time, there are vocal proponents of the “feeling approach,” of compassionate engagement and dramatic action, even of a revival of mysticism, aiming at overcoming The System which is seen as the evil source of misery and suffering.
—Rittel and Webber 1973
From the father of the Visa card…
Dee Hock on Chaordism…
“As the futurist James Burke pointed out, it took centuries for information about the smelting of ore to cross a single continent and bring about the Iron Age. During the time of sailing ships, it took years for that which was known to become that which was shared. When man stepped onto the moon, it was known and seen in every corner of the globe 1.4 seconds later—and that is hopelessly slow by today’s standards.
No less important is the disappearance of scientific float, the time between the invention of a new technology and its universal application. It took decades for the steam engine and automobile to attain universal acceptance. It took years for radio and television. Today, countless devices utilizing microchips leap virtually overnight into universal use throughout the world.
This endless compression of float, whether of money, information, technology or for that matter anything else, can be described as the disappearance of “change” float, the time between what was and what is to be, between past and future. Today, the present hardly exists at all, everything is change, with one incredibly important exception. There has been little loss of organizational float. Although their size has greatly increased, there has been virtually no new idea of organization since the concepts of corporation, nation–state, and university emerged a few centuries ago.”
Without attention to such conditions, localism can subordinate material and cultural differences to a mythical community interest. The notion that communities will make better decisions about food systems is based on an expectation of a fluid cooperation among groups with quite different interests.
—Patricia Allen, Reweaving Food Security 1999
By trying to reduce everything to equations and numbers, you often have to exclude most of the essentials. And that is always the fallacy of the scientism in social science
—Professor Richard Walker, Geography 110, UC Berkeley Fall 2008
