In just a decade... The Book of Changes

My former friend Del Close once casually explained away any amazement I had at how books that I open to any random page, will speak directly to me. I walk over to a bookshelf, pick any volume, flip it open to anywhere and read.

"It usually speaks to me about the moment at hand or my life's current status," I gush.

"Oh, that's just book-divination," he tosses off.

Like some kind of a two-bit card-trick, I continue to be fascinated with book-divination and have gone through the greater portion of my life as a semi-serious student of Taoism and the I-Ching or Book of Changes.

Sad to say, Del passed away almost a decade ago and since then, the Web has greatly expanded my horizons... welcome the Information Age. Now it seems my Firefox tabbed-browser is filled with cross-referenced Web-divination, where one thing leads to another and another. Just like Alice, I leap into the rabbit-hole and find real treasures like the following.

In 1998, Boyd Rossing, Community Development Specialist at the UW Madison's School of Human Ecology, put together a Concept Sheet for the Family Living Program Conference. Today, Professor Rossing teaches about real communities, directing a project, through the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in the School of Human Ecology, to engage, network, and empower African American families in the neighborhoods of South Madison.

Ten years later the Concept Sheet he prepared for the brick 'n mortar community has much to say about whole-system thinking and the successful formation of virtual social network communities.

Wholistic Systems Thinking: A Foundation for Healthy, Sustained Community Collaboration

A cloud masses, the sky darkens, leaves twist upward, and we know that it will rain. We also know that after the storm, the runoff will feed into groundwater miles away, and the sky will grow clear by tomorrow. All these events are distant in time and space, and yet they are all connected within the same pattern. Each has an influence on the rest, an influence that is usually hidden from view. You can only understand the system of a rainstorm by contemplating the whole, not any individual part of the pattern. (Senge, 1990 pp. 6-7)

While we intuitively know that rainstorms and other facets of our lives function as systems we generally do not view the world in this way. From an early age we are taught to break problems apart, to fragment the world. This apparently makes complex tasks and subjects more manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to the larger whole. (Senge, 1990, p. 3)

Today, we are ever more cognizant of the complexity and dynamism of the situations we face in communities and around the globe. We are becoming more conscious of the complex inter-connections of natural, biological and social systems. Examples of systems include biological organisms, the atmosphere, diseases, ecological niches, factories, chemical reactions, political entities, communities, industries, families, teams and organizations. The idea of a system is an organizing metaphor providing a way of organizing our thoughts about the world.

Peter Senge defines a system as "a perceived whole whose elements hang together because they continually affect each other over time and operate toward a common purpose" (Senge, 1994, p. 90). Issues in communities are usually nested within many inter-connected systems. Bronfenbenner sees the development of individuals as embedded in ever larger systems beginning with family, peers and neighborhood and expanding out to include work, government, culture and environment. (Santrock, 1997, 46-48)

We are also coming to understand that systems follow a dynamic and creative process of growth and change. Drawing from studies of cellular life, animal evolution and evolution of ecological systems three distinct phases have been identified. They are

• needs-based bonding,
  
• commonality-based bonds, and
  
• potential-based bonds across differences, the latter being the mature phase of development.
  

Transitions between phases are called break-points because processes leading to success in the past begin causing failure and require adoption of new processes. Break-point periods are turbulent times of struggle and crisis. Today, as we face crises in our localities, whole systems thinking invites us to develop communities that draw on all the diverse potentials that exist in our environments thus moving to the mature phase of our community systems (Jarman & Land, 1995, pp. 24-28).

As we have paid more attention to the social dimensions of complex problems we have also begun to shift away from hard systems thinking that emphasizes rational selection of efficient means of achieving desired outcomes and where learning is not a concern. We are shifting toward soft systems thinking in order to address fuzzy, ill defined problems, where process is as important as product and where learning is emphasized (Walker, G. & Daniels, S., undated) The view of wholism goes yet further and views systems as organic living entities, where a wholeness and connectedness between all beings and things is perceived. (Gozdz, 1995, pp. 63-64)

Flood and Jackson (1991) elaborate on the implications of the soft system concept for intelligent communal action. According to a soft systems view, problem situations arise when people have contrasting views on the same situation. To address soft systems the people involved in the system engage in a learning cycle where participants reflect on and dialogue about their perceptions of the real world, constructing and considering a variety of systemic models and selecting and acting on those that yield improvements in mutually desired outcomes. Inquiry and problem-solving are both logic and culture driven. With a plurality of viewpoints many legitimate problems and goals emerge for consideration.

Thus, along with recognizing the complexity and interdependence of systems we are seeing a need to adjust our learning, decision-making and action processes to better account for this complexity. Accordingly on the community level approaches that emphasize collaboration of various actors who have knowledge of different aspects of complex systems have become common and on the large organization level approaches under the title of learning organization are proliferating. These approaches promote a systemic and ongoing learning process in which a temporarily shared culture is created that allows understandings to be shared and mutually developed, conflicts resolved and actions taken. These processes can be called collaborative learning. Successful collaborative learning sustains quality discourse, including constructive discussion of ideas, and collaborative argument by following interaction guidelines that emphasize listening, questioning, clarification, feedback, modeling and collective meaning-making through framing and reframing (Daniels, et. al., 1996).

Each participant brings a piece of the "truth."

When participants face the reality of multiple viewpoints together they develop a sense of true connectedness. They then have the potential of translating that experience into collective intelligence through collective learning and action. (Gozdz, 1995, p. 60)