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Holistic
philosophy views each person as a flash of consciousness
in existence that is of existence. What a person
is, is what everything else is. Thus, a person
perceiving the world is in fact world perceiving
itself.
Painting by M
C Escher
Nature
as a phenomenon of 'wholes' can never be fully known by our mind
for the very reason that our mind is part of it.
Seeking absolute mastery, as reductionism does,
misses the point of being human. The point is
that the complex web of interdependent interrelationships
is the very nature of mind. In fact, mind is the
object and subject of complexity, not an
externally appointed master over it.
Systemic
thinking begins with an intuitive grasp of the
existence and demands balancing mastery
with mystery, which means living somewhere in
between the hopelessness of the belief that we
are unable to understand anything and, at the
other extreme, the naivety of belief that our
mind can know everything.
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Thoughts
from some of the leading 'systems thinkers': |
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"Result-based management" has a bad name these days. It is typical to hear people lament that "all that matters around here is the bottom line." Bosses everywhere focus people "on the numbers" and seek to motivate them to perform. Yet few organizations perform up to their potential, and, ironically, the inability to realize that potential is a deep source of dissatisfaction among most organization's members. No one wants to be on a mediocre team. Here in lies a deep puzzle. Results truly matter to people. Yet focusing on the results is often a poor way to succeed - at least the way it is typically done in most organizations. |
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- Peter
Senge |
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When you are thinking something, you have the feeling that the thoughts do nothing except inform you the way things are and then you choose to do something and you do it. That's what people generally assume. But actually, the way you think determines the way you're going to do things. |
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- David
Bhom |
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While a self-organizing system's openness to disequilibrium might seem to make it too unpredictable, even temperamental, this is not the case. Its stability comes from a deepening center, a clarity about who it is, what it needs, what is required to survive in its environment. Self organizing systems are never passive, helpless victims, forced to react to their environments. |
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- Margaret
Wheatley |
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