There are some voices in the systems thinking world that have the power of narrative, better than I could ever express myself. In this amazingly connected world, we can find and access best available content. These snippets below express what I have come to think of the challenges ahead, but also of the exciting possibilities.
# U.Lab: Transforming Business, Society, and Self
Defining reality … it is what it is;
Ego to Eco
# Turning Toward Our Blind Spot:
Seeing the Shadow as a Source for Transformation
It is a process, one step at a time. The core argument Scharmer is making is basically putting into action what Donella Meadows argues in Leverage Points:
The power to transcend paradigms.
The highest leverage of all is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to realize that NO paradigm is “true,” that even the one that sweetly shapes one’s comfortable worldview is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe.
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 whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into Not Knowing.
People who cling to paradigms (just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything we think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, not even a reason for being, much less acting, in the experience that there is no certainty in any worldview. But everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it a basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose one that will help achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe (or put in the name of your favorite deity here) and do his, her, its will, which is a lot better informed than your will.
It is in the space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.