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Donella Meadows

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Donella Meadows

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This is a pointer (thanks to Phil Hadley) to a manuscript excerpted from
Donella Meadows' unfinished last book. 
She summarizes some very deep concepts of complex systems theory. 
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/447.html">http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/447.html</a> 
Dancing with systems: What to do when systems resist change. 
 
Here is my summary of her summary: 
1) Get the beat. 
2) Listen to the wisdom
of the system. 
3) Expose your mental
models to the open air. 
4) Stay humble.
Stay a learner. 
5) Honor and protect
information. 
(Thou shalt not distort,
delay, or sequester information.) 
6) Locate responsibility
in the system. 
7) Make feedback policies
for feedback systems. 
8) Pay attention to what
is important, not just what is quantifiable. 
9) Go for the good of
the whole. 
10) Expand time horizons. 
11) Expand thought horizons. 
12) Expand the boundary
of caring. 
13) Celebrate complexity. 
14) Hold fast to the
goal of goodness. 
 
Another good article by Donella Meadows is 
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.sustainer.org">http://www.sustainer.org</a>/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf 
Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System 
 
Of the 12 leverage points, the most powerful one sounds like what Neo can
do in Matrix Reloaded: 
1. The Power to Transcend Paradigms 
"There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm.
 That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradims, to stay flexible,
to realize that no paradigm is "true," that every one, including the one
that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding
of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension.
 It is to "get" at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and
to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that the whole realization
as devastatingly funny.  It is to let go into Not Knowing, into what the
Buddhist call enlightenment." 
 
-Roger Frye
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