We Are Living Blindly In An Outmoded Paradigm

    In her seminal book, Thinking In Systems, Donella Meadows lists 12 leverage points for intervening in systems. High on her list in terms of effectiveness are those interventions that result in paradigm shifts. Citing Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, and Adam Smith, Meadow says “people who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.”

    When people were living in a pre-Copernican paradigm, they didn’t think that they were living in any particular paradigm; they were simply seeing the world as it was. The Sun revolved around the Earth; you could count on it. Every day. It was obvious that the Earth, as God’s special creation, was at the Center of the Universe. Then came Copernicus. Sorry, it seems that the Earth is not the center of the universe, that it, along with other planets revolves around the Sun. And whole world-views were turned upside down. First, one man saw it, then a few, then many, and finally a new post-Copernican paradigm emerged. Not without much resistance and soul-searching. In the end, the pre-Copernican paradigm was seen as simply wrong.

    We are now living blindly in an outmoded self-centered paradigm, one in which our personal experiences are felt to be the touchstones of reality. In this paradigm, how we feel about ourselves, others, other groups, who are our friends and who our enemies, all of these are experienced as solid reflections of the reality of who we and they are. We are simply seeing the world as it is.

    Observations based on my work with the Power Lab and the Organization Workshop suggests a fundamentally different reality.

    We are systems-centered beings and much of our experience is shaped not by who we are but by the nature of the systemic conditions we are in. Organizationally, those at the Top are prone to falling into painful and destructive territorial issues with one another; those in the Middle become alienated, competitive and evaluative of one another; and those in Bottom groups fall into the conforming pressures of groupthink. The feelings these people have about one another seem  to them to be solid, based on the reality of who they are. Culturally, we observe religious and ethnic groups across the globe experiencing one another as dangers to be avoided or controlled or, in the extreme, destroyed. These feelings too feel solid and based on the reality of who these others are.

    Shifting from a self-centered to a system-centered paradigm provides a fundamentally different understanding of these relationships. We notice how system processes shape our consciousness. We focus less on individuals and more on wholes system processes. We see systems differentiating (parts becoming more different from one another) and homogenizing (parts maintaining their commonality); we see systems individuating (members moving independently, pursuing their individual objectives) and integrating (members coming together in common purpose.) And we notice the consequences when these processes go seriously out of balance: territoriality, alienation, groupthink, racial and ethnic conflict, among them.

    Shifting from a self-centered to a systems-centered paradigm opens up fundamentally different strategies for system intervention: from self-centered interventions: fix, fire, divorce, separate, therapize, control, destroy one another, to systems-centered interventions: alter the configuration of system processes, balance over-differentiated systems with homogenization, balance over-integrated systems with individuation, and so forth.

    The self-centered paradigm is outmoded; it produces erroneous understanding and misguided interventions. A systems-centered paradigm is being born. First, one person sees it, then a few, them many, until a new paradigm emerges.

 

Comments

[Doug Groseclose]

Barry, in what I have come to call "Bateson's Curse," Gregory Bateson stated it this way...

"There is latent in Cybernetics [systems theory] the means of achieving a new and perhaps more human outlook, a means of changing our philosophy of control, and a means of seeing our own follies in wider perspective".

"The myth of power, is of course, a very powerful myth; and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it... But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to all sorts of disaster... If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also come to see the world in terms of God versus man; elite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at the world can endure...

To want control is the pathology! Not that the person can get control, because of course you never do... Man is only a part of larger systems, and the part can never control the whole...

The whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable during the Pre-Cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way."

Doug

[Karin]

Interesting. Yes it is the reality for most of us right now but I do think there is a rejection of that occurring at this point amongst individuals who are internally motivated and that is much more slowly but visually starting to show up in those who are more externally motivated.

Let me toss this into the mix: given the rise of social networks in which individuals are reaching out to work collaboratively with others, often people they have not met-do you see the shift from the individual contained in the corporate box when they are wearing their work hat rejecting that box and developing their own 'cloud' (to borrow from the tech types) formations in which they no longer fit within a box in a hierarchical system but in a 'cloud' in which they can invite, accept or reject others and/or others ideas based on what works for their 'tribe'. I use the word tribe in the context that social networkers use it-that of the group you build. I am seeing this happening and am utterly fascinated with the way the 'systems' are morphing, one in which people are pulled not pushed into change. It comes out much like "if you want to join us on this trek you will have to contribute, you will have to collaborate, you will have to be accountable for your actions and you will have to become comfortable with ambiguity"- it is your choice but we are going ahead with or without you. Where it used to be the norm that one was expected to fit into the system as set, now one is being challenged to establish something different-no more "comfortable with the devil you know", rather become comfortable with being a 'pioneer'.

This is a topic that has occupied much of my reading, interacting and observational activities for the past few years.

[Peter Block]

Barry: Elegant blog. Thanks.