Social System Thinking

Participation to fix our government is not compulsory, nor is the survival of the country.

We are a part of the system of government, and how we “interact” has an effect on the whole.

“We can start a revolution when we know what we stand against. However, to create change that lasts, we need to know what we stand for.” (“Together is Better” by Simon Sinek.)

The explanations given by most news outlets are analyses or observations of single events happening during the day/week of news.

Opinion programs try to glue together several of these news events to explain the trend of those observations. All are shortsighted and over a longer period of time, all become myopic events.

Long-term events are defined by thinkers that can capture longer-term changes and distill from them the resulting new reality in the World. The product is called an “Era.”

In 1993 Russell Ackoff gave a Lecture on “System Thinking in Action” where he explained how we need to grow from a “Mechanistic to a Social System Thinking” view, explaining what an ERA is using the Renaissance as an example.

Ackoff — “Social System Thinking” was driven by Corporations trying to stay competitive with the Japanese Quality systems. Learned employee understanding of their job was key, and “Learning Organizations” were born.

Ackoff asked, “why?” There have always been systems, why now? The answer is “because our reality had changed.” In the 1990s, Social Media made its entrance into the world with “Myspace, Facebook.” “Blogging” begins to gain popularity. “AOL Instant Messaging” shrinks snail mail time. (Wikipedia).

Ackoff — “The concept of our view of the world changes as we adapt thus, the process of acculturation absorbs the changes, based on our set of assumptions as we grow with technology.”

The idea of the “Silicon Chip” used in the Apollo Landing computer did not take long to catch on. Many Universities in the 60s went to work immediately to study many uses for creating circuitry to enable various applications. Graduate students at our university worked on a chip on such applications. I was helping one as an undergraduate, creating a circuit to “detect Nuclear particles in the air,” in the 1970–71 time frame.

Our culture has grown due to innovation. Innovation is born from individuals that pursue an idea to create something of clear benefit to themselves or many. Our “new” phones came out of the Space Program.

“Pursuing” an idea requires an environment of freedom to work, secure, and expose the idea to others. Corporations are created to adapt these ideas and grow a market, Facebook is an example. They see profit from public consumption, we grow together faster because new ideas are adapted all the time; some make it to market, others don’t.

In the private sector, innovation requires capital. Capital requires investors. Investors require information to understand enough to risk their money. They could keep their money safe in a government-guaranteed account, however, if everybody did this, their money will be stagnant; there would be no growth. See the Fish story.

The progress of humanity is intimately linked to technical progress. It has allowed us to have time to “think,” not just survive.

Ackoff, explaining a change of an Era, from the Middle Age to the Modern, Thinking Age — “The fundamental nature of the change, is derived from several facts. The first was that the expected life was 27 years before the renaissance. 40% of the children born did not survive infancy. 90% of the People never traveled more than 4 miles from their place of birth during their entire life, and they lived in abject poverty. If you begin to amplify those statistics and imagine what life was like in the Middle Ages, it was pretty miserable. So, the fundamental question that was asked what is the purpose of life? “Life,” answered the Catholic Church, the only international entity at the time, provided an answer, “life is preparatory for death. If you live life correctly, you have heaven to go to.” So, why worry about 27 years? So, the Middle Ages’ worry was about spiritual life and the afterlife, not this life. That can be seen in all the literature and art of that time. No realism of life as it was expressed in literature or art. The preoccupation was with the afterlife. The “New Humanism” was born out of the crusades when hordes of people moved through Europe and differences in life were noted. The other was when trade out of Italy, as far as India and China happened. They visited cultures completely different from ours. This opened questions about what is responsible for those differences? And, became curious about man. In one obscure Encyclical of the time, curiosity became a sin, but despite that inquiring people ignored it. All of this increased the inquiry about the nature and purpose of man and its environment. All of that led to the renaissance- “rebirth.” The “re-entry” of man into this world.”

Out of the Renaissance, science was born in spite of the world power of the time, (the Catholic Church.). It led to the belief that a complete understanding of the universe was possible.

We are in the Midst of a Change of Age

Technology has driven the ascension of the Human race since a monkey used a rock to crush nuts or a bone to kill prey.

As stated atop this post “We are a part of the system of government, and how we “interact” has an effect on the whole.” Our interactions are negative. In other words, we are “diverging.” The next post will try to tackle “Divergence of our Social System.”