Missing conceptual link?

From Changing the Strategic Game to Changing the Strategic Frame (Part #5)

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All | PDF] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

Clearly there are multiple obstacles to "all of the people" changing "the system", however successful "some of the people" may be in doing so in their own areas and according to their own criteria -- and perhaps only for themselves. Stafford Beer makes the point well, as does the Everybody, Anybody... "poem".

A possible "missing link" can usefully be identified to render more practical the alternative Cancún Declaration:

Let's change the system of thinking, not the planet

The current focus of the Declaration on "the system" can usefully be seen as yet another "abstract slogan" -- which Esteva rightly condemns. In fact, as part of the system, it is quite questionable whether individuals or groups can change it -- as warned by Stafford Beer. It is totally unclear that there is any possibility of the variety of groups acting coherently to change the system, when many consider each other to be part of "the problem" and not part of "the solution".

Reframing the focus onto the "system of thinking" poses the challenge in new ways. It suggests that by changing the current focus of thinking:

• the pattern of dialogue regarding desirable changes might become more productive and more capable of sustaining systemic changes
• systemic changes would be more readily enabled and facilitated
• planetary conditions could be seen otherwise, enabling new modes of engaging with them

However the "focus" metaphor is trapped yet again in the optical-vision metaphor, which -- if it is to be taken seriously -- calls for more serious attention to the nature of optical systems in facilitating "focus". Whilst there is now deep understanding of such systems for both microscopy and telescopy, little of this understanding has informed the strategic vision metaphor or the necessity of corrective and enhancing lenses.

Such might indeed be the concerns of a University of Earth -- of which Esteva's Universidad de la Tierra (Oaxaca, Mexico) offers a model. As suggested by "epistemological body odour", potentially vital to any such change in the system of thinking is a degree of self-reflexivity, appropriately taking account of how one's preferred strategic initiative may be perceived by any "other" (Engendering the Future through Self-reflexive Group Initiatives, 2008; Self-reflexive Challenges of Integrative Futures, 2008; Consciously Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive systems, and third order organizations, 2007).

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All | PDF] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]