A systems change initiative I witnessed on the weekend. I think my nomination for LinkedIn post of the year goes to Cameron Tokinwise for this one: Good reminder for those extolling Systems Thinking from Pelle Ehn at the beginning of his still remarkable 1988 book, _Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts_ – that systems are only ever ensembles considered as systems. Systems are not things in the world, but ways of understanding how things in the world relate to each other. Systems Thinking is a choice to interpret the world as sets of systems. To be concerned about trying to effect …
It’s not at all clear where the social media drip feed is at these days. Here’s where you can find me on the web these days: It’s all coming apart isn’t it? The social media landscape has become fragmented and disjointed. The main sites that still dominate the global system are starting to lose functionality. I have a love/hate relationship with social media, but these days the love is waning quickly. And so, I’m wondering where everyone is and what you’re using these days. Here’s my setup. Facebook I have been on Facebook for a long time. In 2010 I …
One of the hallmarks of a complex problem is the fact that we are confronted by paradox and polarity everywhere we turn. When a situation has a both/and in it, it is dynamic and unresolvable to one choice or the other. It needs to be managed, lived with, coaxed into a place where the positive aspects of both can coexist. These polarities exist everywhere in human systems. On my home island right now we are going through one of our periodic confrontations of the polarities that define our place. Fundamentally this polarity comes down to an age old struggle between …
In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible: we were trying to live a personal life and yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I — Adrienne Rich, 1992, hat tip to Jim My …
Richard Rohr has been an important and influential presence in my own spiritual journey over these past 10 or 15 years and although I have never met the man, I have visited the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, and every day I reflect on his teachings and practice through daily blog posts from the Center and through the vast library of Rohr’s works. After several years of transition, Richard Rohr now seems to be fully released from his duties at the Center as he nears the end of his life, and this little video series is a lovely …