--- Michael Dawson <mdawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
> This quote is a fine illustration of why "systems
> theory" is so massively
> over-rated. Every claim in this passage is
> debatable at best. "All our old
> policies" are dead because they've been rendered
> unworkable by the world?
> Horse hockey. Many of them are as excellent and
> relevant as ever, but are
> simply "dead" because of politics. And, meanwhile,
> how are humans to live
> at all without forcing their "models" on "fluid
> reality?"
Michael,
I moved this to a different thread, because the quote was a signature that goes into all of my emails and was not specifically germane to the question of the anti-war movement.
First of all, has there ever been a statement on LBO that is not debatable?
Second of all, I think the quote- although not particularly original- does have some relevance to the world we live in today. Namely, with the dissolution of the "certainty" that old values (Judaeo-Christion, Muslim, etc) brought, some people are returning to a very orthodox, traditional, fundamentalist view of the world, imposing a rigid, fixed system on a fluid reality.
I dont think he (Jantsch) is arguing against the usefulness of models, just that models are transient and therefore are to be abandoned once a better/more useful model is discovered.
Thomas
<<We are at such a point in mankind's evolution where changed conditions invalidate all our policies that have been so successful even in the recent past, and that presumably have constituted the ideal response to a presumably unchanging and unchangeable human condition. No wonder we are stupefied and confused-but our mistake is the same which many cultures have made before us, namely to force a rigid model upon a fluid reality.
Erich Jantsch - "Design for Evolution: Self-Organization and Planning in the Life of Human Systems"
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