From Limping to Leaping; Teaching the system to dance

Below are some of the topics I've considered writing about.  What are your thoughts?

Benefits to Reduced Rewards:  Helping systems self-sustain

From Limping to Leaping:  Teaching the system to dance

Designing for Personality:  People scaled progress

The Profit Primacy Pitfall

Building New Banks:  Keeping it local, keeping it human, keeping it good.

Profits to the People:  Doing good with local loans

Ending the national ponzi scheme of interest:  Fixing the missing interest loophole

Ending Interest:  Closing the loop with community cash

Stocking Up on Wealth:  Barter Banks Make Wealth Without Interest

Avoiding Fixations:  Examining the roots as well as the trees

Making Real Money:  Assets as Deposits and Time for Cash

Burgeoning Bottom Lines Building Community Health

Creating Virtuous Circles:  Rewarding real wealth creation

Rewarding Rational, Realistic, Robust and Human Scaled Progress

Bonuses, Benefits and Dividends, rewarding ALL the stakeholders

Rationally Reducing Expectations:  Rewarding mindful, progressive and conservative action

The case for working within existing systems

Everywhere people are, problems are too. 

This is not pessimistic, it is realistic in the truest sense of the word.  It's an essence of being human.  As long as we continue to grow and change, we will invent systems for our support – in fact, we can’t live without them.  Instead of vilifying our early attempts at systems (which actually embody a number of robust, even ingenious solutions), we must instead honor the intent of the systems, appreciate the entire reality of why some seemingly imperfect solutions may be appropriate in an imperfect world (Don’t try to eat a year’s worth of food in one meal), and accept and work within the natural forms that are most suited to exceptional outcomes.

It's a little bit about humility, a little bit about the turtle's race, and a lot about our children.

That's why I support the food movements - the sustainable foods movement, the local foods movement, the organic movement - each one of these embodies a greater understanding of how we are connected to the world arround us.  Each one offers a piece of a larger solution, which is best learned by living within that solution.

Small steps, big goals.

A Wisdom System

The following is a post that I submitted to a mailing list I participate in.  I hoped it might fit well here:

Higher Education is currently highly interconnected with capitalist values, methods and systems.  Some of these include: The recognition of the importance for preparing students for jobs markets if universities are to continue to function; Partnerships with for-profit corporations which provide research funding; The very basic principle that those individuals who comprise Universities have been reared and exist in an environment influenced and structured by capitalism.

It seems improbable that humanity will create a new system to totally replace capitalism within the next hundred years.  Perhaps not impossible, just improbable, given the number of stakeholders dependant on capitalism for their daily survival.  A replacement system would be so complex and so all-encompassing that its evolution, even in the age of technology, would require substantial lengths of time.  Additionally, it would need to not only offer new benefits, but also replace the substantial benefits that capitalism provides to society today - free exchange, choice, leisure, convenience, etc.  It would also require many new values and beliefs be adopted by individuals – a process that would probably only be accomplished on generational time-scales.  All of this is simply to say that if universities hope to substantially increase wisdom in the world within current lifetimes, they will have to do so within the context of capitalism.  This presents unique considerations, some of which I will attempt to address below.

One consequence of the interconnections between capitalism and universities, is the adoption of certain practices and values from the capitalist culture into the Education system.  Currently, we find conditions in our universities that may be largely explained by pressures of society.  One such condition is the narrow focus of degree programs in universities.  (universities have partially resisted this pressure at the bachelor’s level of education, but this is not the case in Masters levels and above.  I speak here of the US education system with which I am familiar)  Such specialization may be one of the prime hindrances to acquiring general wisdom.

During the early 1900’s, influential figures, including John D. Rockefeller and future president Woodrow Wilson, expressed the view that the United States needed a two-track education system.  One, for future leaders, that focused on a traditional liberal arts education in the ancient Greek tradition, the other educating workers to perform tasks.  This may have happened, not necessarily from any conspiracy, or pressure from elites, but rather from pressures contained within the system of capitalist society itself.  For the sake of simplicity, however, let us first consider what the results of that policy might have been, had it been enacted, and then consider how these conditions may have occurred even in the absence of such a policy:

If society had followed a specialized, two track, path, instruction, in all but a very few institutions (for how many leaders does one nation need) would have minimized focus on interconnections between disciplines and would be more inclined to focus on specific proficiencies.  Subject specialization would be seen as a good thing, with the highest paying positions being awarded to the students at universities that regularly produced the highest mastery in specific fields.

Had this been the case, it is important to realize, there may have been other repercussions as well:  Those who were reared under expectations of leadership would find themselves released into a vacuum of competition for these prime leadership positions.  This might have introduced some of the structural weaknesses that we find in ecosystems that are artificially held stable, such as the proliferation of species that might otherwise be unfit for an ecological niche.  Additionally, these individuals might find that their education had itself transformed into its own sort of specialization.  Since their only concern would be managing and leading individuals, those who were most successful at this task (those who had achieved high political office or were otherwise granted acclaim), would gain fame for their alma mater. 

As for the second question, how would this situation have come about absent a top-down policy, the answer may already be clear.  This outcome might quite believably be expected to occur as naturally occurring, emergent property of the system as a whole.  The systems of prestige, enrollment counts, job offers, etc. would create feedback mechanisms - the main ingredient in emergence within complex systems.  Since a society affects the Universities within it, and since some of the characteristics of our societies include seeking prestige, “success to the successful” and vast amounts of resources controlled by powerful entities within a society, it is almost a foregone conclusion that these systems might interact to influence the policies of admissions and instruction within Universities.  I included the opinions of J. D. Rockefeller and W. Wilson to add credence to the idea that the University system may already have been moving in that direction by the time these statements were voiced (politicians and businessmen are not known to support fringe positions).  As to whether this is a characteristic of the current educational system I leave for the reader to consider.

The feedback loops that drive the adaptation of “leadership” schools may be slightly different, but recognizable.  The feedback provided by markets and prestige would smooth the way for a multitude of small decisions that, collectively, would result in institutions known for their production of leaders, as well as Universities famed for the quality of their engineers, schools renowned in computer science, schools designed to produce lawyers, or schools dedicated to athletes.

More to the point however, is this:  Some groups may not be incentivized to grow.  One of these seems, perhaps, to be the all-around wise.  For the benefits of wisdom, in our era of specialization, and endless machines of production may not be immediately apparent.  Indeed, wisdom may be all but indistinguishable for the thirty or forty years that individuals require to reach some level of maturity in that quality.  In fact, it may be that wisdom is, by definition, unable to be produced by systems, if wisdom is not able to be formalized or systematized.  Universities may attempt to formalize narrow degrees of wisdom, however, these narrow specialties may lack the broad interconnections that are the hallmark of deep wisdom. 

True wisdom is often the result of very broad knowledge or experience, along with deep specialization, brought to bear on a specific problem, in a unique time and place.  A decision that is wise today in Topeka, Kansas, may not be a wise decision tomorrow in Missoula, Montana.  In fact, wisdom may be very difficult to recognize.  As an analogy, consider the following:  I can watch Kasparov play chess but, being an average player, the depths of his reasoning would certainly escape me.  The decisions made by someone who is informed from insights in Psychology, System Dynamics, History, Ecology and Political Science, will probably be very different from someone whose decisions are informed by Education, Engineering, Literature and Law.  And both of these individuals’ decisions, when considered by others, may be judged foolish, wise, or shortsighted, depending on the person reviewing the decision.  In our society, we have many individuals trained narrowly in one field.  We have Doctors, Lawyers, and Engineers; Teachers, Firemen and Politicians; many of whom have not made the effort to educate themselves outside of their chosen field.

Our system has lots of educational feedback loops as well.  People like to have their existing points of view validated and today they have many avenues through which they can accomplish this.  Scientists can subscribe solely to scientific publications.  Conservatives can watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal.  Liberals can listen to NPR and read the New York Times.  Economists can read The Economist.  The list goes on.  One feedback loop that may seems to be missing is that for wise individuals.

Perhaps we find feedback loops for wisdom so rare because wisdom, by definition, draws from all disciplines.  Perhaps it is too broad, perhaps it is too rare, or perhaps it is too unique and various in all of its many guises.  Or, perhaps wise individuals are able to drive their own wisdom through experiencing many sources of information.  It has been interesting to me to realize that those who exhibit wisdom come from all walks of life.  From the scientific tradition of Richard Feynman, to the Spirituality of Gandhi, to the Politics of Abraham Lincoln, to the philosophy and psychology of Victor Frankel, to the Literature of Twain, to the historical and ecological wisdom of Jared Diamond, to the Systems perspectives of Donella Meadows, to the uniqueness of Buckminster Fuller, to the Business partnership of Buffett and Munger.  Not to mention, of course, the wisdom displayed by those who read this blog.  Wisdom is everywhere, but still rare, and it is not easily reproducible.  We have writings, and good advice, but we seem to lack a dependable system of supporting children and young adults in gaining their own wisdom.

The difficulty, it would seem, lies in constructing that feedback system which would:

First, recognize true wisdom.  Nicholas Maxwell's work may be of interest here.

Second, value the individuals, as well as the systems that produced that wisdom.

These two ideas taken together create a reinforcing system.

In doing these first two things, I think it is important also that care is taken to not allow the rewarding of wisdom to distort the individuals or the systems which produced that wisdom in the first place.  This is easily stated, perhaps not so easily accomplished.  Two different factors must be considered in the attempt to create a resilient wisdom system:

In order for the feedback mechanisms to support and reinforce the wisdom system itself, that system must be valued in terms that society values (to allow resources to accrue-to and reinforce the wisdom system)

Additionally, since the “purpose” of this system is to create true wisdom, and this wisdom is a quality of individuals, the feedback mechanism must also reinforce and reward wise individuals in terms that these individuals value,

Finally, potentially wise individuals - those youth who would enter a system of wisdom education - must be incentivized to join the system as well.  This may be difficult since, in the process of gaining wisdom, one's perception of what one values may often change as well.  This may mean that there is a disconnection with the example set by, and rewards that accrue to, the wise, and the motivating desires of the young.  (Perhaps this is a wise argument in favor of rewarding wise individuals both in ways that they value, as well as publicly rewarding them in ways that these individuals would have valued as younger versions of themselves?)

Considering the experiences of other successfully adapted organizations in capitalist society, it is foreseeable that, once established, the temptation may occur to adapt this system to the pressures of society, thereby gaining more influence and resources, but in the process, compromising the wisdom system’s ability to continue producing the highest quality wisdom.  What a conundrum...

I am interested to hear your thoughts on these ideas.

Traditions, Systems and Scientific Faith

We people are privileged to know the distant past, and capable of considering the future.  If other creatures have this capacity, they appear unwilling or unable to step outside their niche of sustainability, living within the limits of unyielding nature.  For our part, however, we have become more able than any other creature to flex the walls of our natural boundaries.  We have harnessed grasses to our appetites, coal to our comfort, and earth to our designs.

All of these relationships have become sanctioned by time – not completely, and not without occasional catastrophe – but enough so that our society has come to depend upon these symbioses.  Over thousands of years we have learned lessons of immense value.  Our forefathers existed only because they narrowly survived to learn lessons taught by harsh consequences of mistakes to neighbors, brothers and parents.  As we change, each new layer of complexity creates the necessity to relearn some lessons, as well as to learn others for the first time.  As the first kings arose, and their desires became law we saw catastrophes catalyzed from the demands of arrogance.  (Thanks to Jared Diamond we have strong evidence of the effects of these disastrous policies:  the statues on Easter Island that decimated the productivity and eventually, probably the soil of the island in a catastrophic collapse; the mirrored fate of the southwest tribes as they cut down their sustaining forests so that future generations, as they followed the advice of their fathers, became impoverished by degrees and eventually disappeared.)  It is interesting to think that perhaps the ancient Egyptians also squandered their productivity and ingenuity on the millstones of the pyramids and mismanaged the vast arable landscape while it slowly withered into the desert.  These examples, along with countless others (the potato famine, the black plague, the Roman Empire) give us instruction into the exponential consequences of change by small degree – the simple lack of understanding, the seemingly insignificant changes, until tipping points are reached...  The structure of nature in which we live requires that we adjust our course to subtle currents.  Ignorance or disregard of the canaries in our mineshafts is unwise.

Unfortunately, some of our traits may work against us in this, as some of them no doubt work for us as well.  Our habit is to sanction the actions of our fathers.  This strategy has made sense for thousands of years – because for most of our history we had little else to guide us.  Even today the written word is less valuable than hard won experience.  Mistakes are a part of growth. 

And yet, today, the lessons of our fathers may be disconnected from the lives of their fathers.  And the lives of those grandfathers may have been disconnected from the lives of their fathers before them.  In this country, the lives of those who created our nation were disconnected from much of the wisdom of those who came before – they were unable to profit from our ancestors’ experience of what grew best in the areas they newly colonized.  With the exception of the very few settlers who learned from the native people on the eastern shores, our knowledge was disconnected from what Alexander Pope called the genius of place.  Instead of following traditions and potentially valuable superstitions handed down from posterity, the settlers instead had to make a clean break with the past, planting the species they imported from their homelands, necessarily ignoring the logic of this new place for the experiences of their pasts.  This was to a large part at least understandable if not unavoidable, given the speed of the colonization of America and the demand to support a much larger population than the land had supported before.  And fortunately for the settlers, many of their imported grains, grasses and animals found the country well suited to their needs – deep topsoil, undisturbed for millennia, and a rich variety of experiences drawn from the diverse backgrounds of the colonists did enable the colonists to cobble together a workable solution.  Consequently, the new American land provided for the settlers remarkably well – and allowed for increase upon increase.

The agricultural revolutions powered by synthetic fertilizers and industrial farming practices also had a remarkable impact on the new landscape.  And since the new traditions of American life had not yet had time to become immortalized in ritual and legend, the old hands of the land may have been more willing to let go of their heritage than has been the case in Europe or Asia.  Now we find vast tracts of land devoted to single species of corn, potatoes, and soy.  Massive single strains – genetic clones of each other, planted within touching distance of each other for miles upon miles upon miles create deserts of genetic diversity.  This is contrary to the path that nature follows in every natural ecosystem everywhere.  To ignore the wisdom of nature in this way may place us in a precarious position, as Michael Pollan and many others have pointed out.  The corn blight of the 1970’s may remind us of our precarious position, to say nothing of the potato blight.

And so we find that our traditions, once from our fathers, are now born out of laboratories 20, 30, or 50 years old.  The traditions we cling to are constructs, often devoid of the logic of place which people have learned to consider in determining crop rotation in France, or planting schedules in Italy.  And yet, since we have let down our guard far enough to allow these massive and unprecedented changes to enter into our lives so quickly, we now find ourselves partially dislocated from our past.  Today, we cling to “traditions” just a few years old.  Farmers have become reluctant to abandon the use of pesticides because they are “tradition.”  In the absence of our grandfathers’ traditions, which hailed from his grandfather, and his before that, we find ourselves marooned on an island outside of time.  The realities of capitalism, another tradition in our lives, eventually removed from business all of the farmers who were too “stubborn” to abandon the ways of their fathers.  When they became unable to compete with the large gains in productivity, or unwilling to accept the dubious trade-offs of conformity over quality, they were handed their hats.  “The American consumer demands…”  the farmer was came to understand.  And armed with the metaphors of “survival of the fittest” and an overwhelming awe and unprecedented, unquestioning acceptance of the new marvels of science, the American culture was changed.

Some say that human beings are hard-wired to live in structured hierarchies.  They point to the fact that clans, tribes and chiefdoms gave way to kingdoms and baronies, which eventually gave way to unions, organizations, lodges, churches, governments and sports teams.  No doubt there is some truth to these ideas, but there are also many examples of human cooperation without resort to dominance or hierarchy.  Cooperatives are one example, the unfettered free-trade of one capitalist producer with another is an often forgotten, but important second example.

In the late 19^th century, science began to produce wondrous and miraculous examples of marvels undreamt by the human mind.  The age of wonder, possibility and credulity was created as everywhere people looked, a new modern marvel was being touted.  And these were not the “take it on faith” miracles of the old church – no.  These were honest to goodness, in the flesh, flip a switch and the light comes on, living breathing miracles that could be repeated over and over again, and better yet, ones that for around $400 you could drive home.  No more feeding the horse every day, wasting precious grain on an animal that was only needed 6 months out of the year – just gas it up when you need it and forget about it the rest of the time.  These new technologies were, for many at that time, indistinguishable from miracles.

Could we reasonably expect that when, over and over, the public was treated to examples of these "miraculous" powers, they might begin to transfer their unquestioning belief – once reserved for religion alone, to this new field of science and progress?  When they were confronted by the unbounded optimism from the proponents of these new ways of understanding the world – when men of great learning and social standing pronounced the end of ignorance, the ascendancy of knowledge and the know-ability of all things – can't we forgive the credulous farmer and accepting laborer for their faith and belief in “Science?”  Possibly they felt uneasy with the replacement of so many time-tested beliefs – and certainly not everyone converted – but many swallowed the new orthodoxy without a second thought.  And so, perhaps, a faith in science was accepted – and some men may have begun to count on the leaders of science to deliver them from evil.  And perhaps some put their faith and their hope in a new and a better tomorrow in the hands of this new field of science.

Some scientists might be uncomfortable to hear tell of it this way.  Science, in its practitioners’ minds, is often nothing more than a search for truth.  The vast majority of her proponents, workers and theorists acknowledge freely, and for all to hear, that science is not infallible, not perfect, not a panacea.  But a few of them, perhaps driven by their own desire for certainty, or their own hope for answers, may hold on to the idea that science may be able to tell us all we need to know of the world or that science might be able to solve all problems of humanity.  And it is these few proselytizers who do the damage which is so difficult to undo – And what is the damage?  Simply this:  When an individual is given an answer to all his or her problems, there can be a strong diminishment of personal responsibility for solutions.  When a mind raised with belief encounters such certainty in a respected form, with what tools do we expect it to resist?  And once converted to a faith in science, what do we to expect will come of it?  For science has no spokesperson.  She has no tradition of reverence for guiding principles for human values.  She has no golden rule, forged in the furnaces of interpersonal and civilizational conflicts.  She has no codes of conduct that recognize the impact of a few poorly chosen words, amplified by a media desperate to sell ad copy nationwide.  She has the ethic of practicality, repeatability and a faith that all things can be described rationally.  And while this may be true, it falls far short of providing the congregations of science with a meaningful guide to their daily decisions.

“Should I spray NPK fertilizers on my crops?  I have no tradition to tell me if this is good or bad.  My religion says nothing on the subject, and most of these darned impressive scientists are all telling me to go ahead – plus old John Brown next door bumped his yield 30% last year.  Guess I’d better go ahead and do it.”

Scientists are as influenced by themselves as everyone else is.  Not only do they read their own press clippings, they are mandated to write them, and gain tenure based on how many are published.  The field of science is partially based on reputation, gained by peer-reviewed publication, and which is often controlled by a select group of individuals who largely know each other, see each other at conferences, read the same formative opinions, and attend the same lectures by leading lights in the field.  Any scientist worthy of the name should recognize the potentials for harm in these vast systems that promote conformity in thought.  Those who have become successful should consider the parallel of their situation with that of the succesfully adapted in nature:  The adaptations that worked so well in the past carry no guarantee of success in the future.  Scientists like to tout the ascendency of debate, of the idea that “truth will out.”  And yet, to the very great disappointment of some, this is not always what happens…  In science, as in so many other fields of human endeavor, fed by our innate tendencies, and the systems that nature and nurture create, we sometimes turn the field into a rivalry for reputation, significance and influence.  We may account our successes by our acclaim – and may hold on by fingernails to it.  We acknowledge this fact in the oft repeated maxim that the old-guard must die before the new ideas are accepted.  And yet, when scientists are supposed to understand the human frailties – when they are supposed to appreciate the damage that hubris and ego can cause – they may instead allow the fruits of their labor to be publicized too soon, or manipulated by a system that rewards publication or sometimes profit, above human happiness, or the alleviation of human misery.  Self-concern can sometimes inflate honest self-esteem to ridiculous proportions so that a majority of activity may become self-protection at all costs – this occasionally leads to ridiculous stances on meaningless issues.

All of us may sometimes forget that our task is to improve the human condition – and if that includes that we must deal with indefinable and difficult issues such as "human happiness” and “suffering” then so be it.  What legacy would we expect to be accorded by history if we shirk our duty, stick to the safety of easily defined fields, or avoid the most important questions of our day?  What legacy would we make ourselves worthy of by denying the critical problems created by our new human systems – disconnected from our traditions and our heritage.  How can we live with ourselves, and how will our children live a better life than ours, if we see these new behemoths, these gigantic amalgamations of human ingenuity and accumulated efforts, these eternal institutional and corporate interests, systems driven by disembodied, dismembered fragments of human desires, as too vast, to complex, to be understood and appropriately altered for the good of all?  And who will lead us to this task if not our leading men and women of science?

More than at any time in our history we live in a world we have created.  We may be insufficient to the task of understanding our world, we may be ill equipped to study what we are creating.  We may have difficulty gaining perspective on our systems and our lives.  We may be soothed into complacency by the lack of traditions and heritage to tell us otherwise.  And yet – in spite of all that – mustn’t we try?  For as far as I can tell, we have no one else to tell us the answers that will ensure our survival, and allow our well being to thrive.  We have no oracle to plot our course out of here.  As Daniel Johnston says:  Do yourself a favor, become your own savior.  Divorced of our heritage we may need to become our parents.  Lacking in certainty, we must become our own leaders.  And scientists, in these confusing times, may come to understand that they do have a constituency depending on the answers that science provides.  The fact that they may not approve of people who put their “faith” in science and the fact that many scientists would see it as “wrong” to have faith in a system that one does not understand, in no way alleviates the obligation to see the world clearly as it is, to recognize the current state of affairs, and to objectively respond to reality.

Is there a sense of concern that these ideas are somehow too big, too much, too… what?  Does any of that matter?  Or is it, perhaps, better to look at the seeds of hope contained here and around you, and focus on the big picture, throwing out a line for a better future – for your children, your species, your world?

Perhaps, as we have thrown our systems up around us, we have failed to understand their remaking of our landscape.  Perhaps, as they undertook an existence of their own, beyond the conception of a single individual, we have become overwhelmed by their emergence as a dominant characteristic of our lives.  Perhaps we have been numbed by the intricate complexity of our businesses, our companies, our government, by their seemingly bottomless expression of form, function and efficiency in their intricate existence.  Perhaps we are stunned by the speed with which they are capable of operating – perhaps we are awed by their expression of the goals of growth, or profits, or survival.  Or perhaps we are simply amazed by their ability to self-organize, replicate themselves and survive?  Perhaps we see in them some echo of nature, some reflection of our environment, or perhaps something wholly new?  Perhaps we see it as a new force of nature itself or as a new form of nature, both a part of, and apart from, the world we live on – with emergent characteristics wholly its own?  Perhaps we see the corporate or institutional character as its own thing – divorced from its history, from nature, from man, a sort of Frankenstein?  But in so seeing, we should be very careful not to over endow these creations.  For the legacy of Frankenstein may instruct us in many ways.  Frankenstein was not the name of the monster – but of its creator.  And we should be careful to instill in our creation the qualities and character we want to be remembered for.  I can think of no worse fate than being vilified by history for a legacy visited upon my progeny.

Anyone who would say that this world is perfect is probably exempted from these concerns.  The rest of us may choose to begin the monumental task of studying, cataloguing and understanding these things we, and our ancestors have wrought.  This moment of timely flexibility is fleeting – I hope we grasp its importance, and are informed by its urgency.  For those interested, the fields of System Dynamics and General Semantics may point in a productive direction, or the work of Donella Meadows.  The good work of Nicholas Maxwell likewise may be encouraging, as may the examples set by change artists all around us.

Charitable Contribution

I had an idea the other day – I hoped it might be useful to a charity. 

Most people agree that there are many charities that do wonderful work for the world.  We may also believe that the good of a charity is not only in the acts that it performs for the world, but in the beneficial effects it has on the giver itself.

This idea is designed to increase the number of people who give to charity, to increase the amount that each person gives, and to increase the total amount given to charity.  The benefits of this idea are threefold:

First, it benefits the donors, who have a more positive view of themselves, their community, and the world.

Second, it benefits the charities, which have more resources to do good with.

Third, it benefits the recipients of the increased charity.

The idea is simple.  Based on the foot-in-the-door technique Dr. Cialdini studied, representatives walk to each house in their local area.  They begin the conversation by asking if the residents have given to any charity within the last 5 years.  Whatever the answer, they then continue with the response that they are working to increase the number of people who donate to charity in this specific neighborhood.  They next ask if the resident would be willing to walk around to all of the homes within a five block radius, asking them to give to charity.  A few will say yes.  The majority will say no. 

Those who say no will then be asked:  “Okay, well then is it okay with you if we leave this jar with you and come back in 6 months to pick it up?  We’ll donate the money to any charity that you choose.”  The jar is labeled “Charity Change” and there is a slot in the top.  Many will agree to this request.  The representative will then ask for their phone number and email address to schedule the pickup.  Before leaving, the representative says, “I recommend that you put the jar wherever you normally put your spare change.  By the way, do you have any children who you would like to have a jar to so that you can teach them the value of donating to charity?”  Whatever the answer, the representative ends with:  “Most people fill their jar within a few months – if you want another jar, please call me and I’ll drop one off.”

Each month the resident is sent an email with details of the local campaign, contrasted with neighborhood, city, state and nationwide results.  Three months later, a follow up call is placed asking about their progress so that they can tally the local results (“How full is you r jar – half, 1/3, Full?  Do you need another jar?”)  One week before six months, the representative calls to schedule a pick-up (“Don’t give you jar to anyone else!”)  They ask about the fullness of the jar as well – and also ask if there are mainly pennies and dimes, or if it’s quarters and paper money.  “Don’t bother counting it, we will send you a total of what you donated once we count it.  You’ll get a receipt for your taxes.”

Thank you!

This program benefits from a number of human characteristics.  The large request at the beginning (to canvas the neighborhood) sets up a strong desire to comply with a smaller request, and increases the chance that the resident will agree to keep the jar.  The fact that they can choose the charity to receive their donation also increases agreement.  Accepting the jar will create a desire to reciprocate the gift of the jar – especially if the jar looks like a gift (a ribbon with a bow, bright colors, etc.)  Keeping the jar in their own home increases their sense of ownership over the decision to give to charity which increases their positive emotional response to giving.  The follow up calls will increase the amount that they deposit in the jar, and in some cases, will cause them to donate an increased amount or write a check at the end.  Some people may have to be cautioned not to give more than they can afford.

Finally, when the jar is picked up, the homeowner is first asked how it went, then asked if they would be willing to canvas the neighborhood, and finally asked if they would be willing to keep another jar.  The key to encouraging continued participation is keeping just the right amount of follow up with the resident.  Not too much to be pushy, and not so little that the resident thinks they’ve been forgotten.  Also critical is a constant emphasis on the positive benefits that the resident is now a part of.  Total money raised – pictures of people helped by local donations, etc.  Sharing participation percentages in a way that highlights the high numbers of participants (67% of our neighborhood participated in giving to charity through this effort this year!  312 people in your neighborhood gave to charity through this program) is another way to increase participation.

Some of these ideas may seem a little unorthodox, but I feel the worthiness of the goal sanctifies the means.  What do you think?

A Subtle Awareness of Shifting Beliefs

It’s simplistic and misleading, but it’s also perfectly true that everything is an idea.

Especially in the human realm, everything that we see, every thought that we think, every relationship that exists, every moment of time that occurs in contemplation, or in reminiscence exists or is reflected in the mind.  If it doesn’t, we are not aware of it, and therefore, to us, it does not exist.  Its effects may still exist, and so we may posit it as a thing, but the thing itself must exist in our minds, or to us, it doesn’t.

It is probable that there is an existence independent of our awareness of it – but what difference does it make to us?  And if this is true, there is much that we can also gain a deeper appreciation of:  Human systems are created by us – therefore each and every human system would never have existed without our awareness of it.  Importantly, what does that mean for the creation of future human systems?  It means that they must begin with human awareness.

It’s tempting to say that we can imagine a new reality – and in one sense we can – but there is more to it than that.  There is consensus that must be created.  There is awareness, reflection, discussion, transmission, assimilation, and finally, the action of creation.  Change, on a great scale, can seem overwhelmingly, breathtakingly, fast.  But that is only because the only part of the change that can be easily seen is action.  We may see a few of the memes cropping up here and there within the media, or sense reoccurring patterns within communication.  We may experience a subtle awareness of shifting beliefs and ideas, but in the millions of individual reckonings, the thousands of deep conversations between influential opinion makers (who may not even realize that they are) there is a cultural dialog through which emerges a new concept of our world.

A few may feel that they understand the broad strokes of this process – possibly some even feel they have gone further than this.  These people may seek to influence the culture through media, advertising, and subtle memes.  But the property of emergence and the understandings of complexity hint that there may not be any possibility of predicting emergent behaviors with certainty.

So when the “unthinkable” happens, a few surely saw it coming.  A few were in the way of the swing – and they almost surely felt the tension building as the sea of opinion rocked them.  It can as easily be understood as a person coming to understand a new belief, but replicated and magnified across the spectrum of ages, beliefs, genders and culture, subtly or greatly changing each person who learns this new idea or behavior.  If we could see these shifting beliefs from a height, we would see them sweeping as wind across fields of wheat – spreading through print, video and conversation, igniting small understandings and occasionally culminating in massive shifts of culture.

Changing the System (Part 2)

I promised a second post on changing a system. Some of this may be redundant but I hope it's helpful - especially for those of us hoping to see more positive movements like those being advanced by this group.

Let’s say I wanted to make a change in my life.

I would be wise to try to understand all the ways that I was being pushed to continue doing what I am doing currently. There must be reasons, or I wouldn’t still be doing it, right?

So, I begin by understanding that actions have reasons. This is not to say that they are necessarily good reasons… Just that they are reasons. Smokers smoke because of the habit, because their bodies crave the nicotine content, because they enjoy the rebellion, because of placebo effects, and past positive memories, along with other reasons as well.

The same could be said for any number of habits that have serious side effects.

Take our dependence on other countries’ oil for instance. Almost nobody likes it, almost everybody sees that there are negative consequences that go along with it, but there are reasons that we stay dependent.

One of the most powerful of these is the energy available in oil. I read recently in Yes! Magazine that one liter of oil contains an equivalent amount of energy to 5 weeks of human labor. Amazing isn't it? It’s no wonder that we have found so many uses for this substance. I’m certain when oil was first discovered it seemed like a tremendous benefit to humanity, with little or no down-side. The fumes were probably seen as mild compared to the smells emitted from tanneries and coal furnaces. Plus, there were very few applications for oil machines, so the eventual situation of an entire world dependent on oil would have seemed unlikely.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see how the gradual accumulation of decisions brought us to the place we are in today. The invention of the gasoline engine led to wars won through the aid of gasoline powered armor and airplanes, led to industries founded on the cheap power useful in many applications. As we see over and over again, if there is a useful resource in the environment, we humans are extraordinarily able at finding a way to make use of it. Especially under a system such as capitalism – where individual efforts are rewarded.

Capitalism, the system as a whole, excels at finding uses for useful things. Land is put to the highest and best use. Fat pigs are bred with other fat pigs to make fatter breeds. Cattle are bred to put on weight more quickly, requiring less feed, less heat, and less space until processing. Chickens are bred to lay more eggs. Tomatoes are bred to be redder in color, to stay red longer, and to stay firm during transportation so they don’t squash. All of these things are done in the name of a quality. Often, the quality that is enhanced is the quality of profitability, but there are other qualities that are enhanced as well. When we consumers decided that we wanted lean meat, pork was bred to be leaner. When we decided we wanted cheap chicken and beef, farmers produced cheaper meat.

There is a sort of Catch-22, merry-go-round quality to discussions about the changes in our lives that come from the systems we live within – tempting us to ask which came first, a more profitable chicken, or the demand for cheaper eggs?

On one side of the equation, corporations might like to point fingers at consumers and say – “If people demanded higher quality chicken, we would give it to them. We would have to!”

On the other side of the equation, consumers might be tempted to point back and say, “It’s your responsibility as the producer to make sure that the chicken is more wholesome, nutritious and flavorful!”

Producers might reply “We tried that, and people bought the cheaper chickens from our competitors! We’d love to produce nothing but free range all natural birds, but most people won’t buy them!”

And consumer groups then might say “Well then we need laws that require chickens to be free-range and all natural, so that all the chickens are the same quality, and businesses are on a level playing field!”

In step the politicians, who might say “But people vote us out of office when we try to pass laws like that. They say, who are you to make me pay more for chicken? What is this, Russia? If I want to buy cheap chickens that taste crummy and are raised in factory farms, who are you to tell me I can’t? Who’s more important, a chicken (that tastes fine to me), or my family's welfare?”

And there we may find angry citizen groups, lobbyists, corporate ad campaigns and politicians all fighting each other – because the truth tends to get obscured in these sort of debates.

So what's the solution? Is there a solution?

One thing we can probably all agree on is that all parties would need to work together to find a real, lasting solution – but we can’t do that until all sides have access to all the information.

It might be helpful to ask, what are the secrets that each side is hiding, or not acknowledging (including my own side)? What secrets cause me to look at others with distrust, and keep us from building a truly cohesive agreement?

Farmers like to say that their mass produced birds are just as good as any other bird.

Is that true? Most people agree that the majority of mass produced birds have less flavor. Cooks Illustrated did a taste test on this subject, and found that to be largely - although not entirely - the case. We also find that in mass produced slaughter operations, there is often a much higher possibility of ammonia contamination as well as bacterial contamination

Many people also find that mass production operations are more cruel to animals

Citizen groups like to say that mass produced birds are completely inferior, and actively dangerous to our health

Is this true? There are benefits to cheap food that we would be foolish to deny. Single mothers straining to feed their family can not be blamed for purchasing low cost ingredients - especially when they choose a mass-produced chicken over a meal of fast food.

Also, it is important to acknowledge that there have been cases in the past when the negative health effects of mass produced foods have been overstated by citizen advocacy groups.

Politicians like to say that people have all of the power, and that it is the politicians job to listen to the people.

But how true is this really? Wouldn't it be more true to say that there is a give and take between politicians and their constituents? Wouldn't most political office holders acknowledge that their office carries with it a responsibility to try and educate the voters about what is best for them?

It is also important to acknowledge that political officials are responsible to the people who elect them to office, and that it is occasionally necessary to create rules that protect the powerless.

Consumers like to say that they make well informed purchasing decisions

In truth, we consumers can become overly reliant on government programs like the USDA to ensure our food is safe. It was actually discovered during the egg recall that government regulators had never visited the operation that produced the contaminated eggs. We consumers need to be aware that our reliance on USDA stamps may be hiding dangerous situations from our conscious awareness.

It is also important for us as consumers to be honest about the fact that we can often become overwhelmed by the masses of conflicting statements about health and food. From fad diets, to overly hyped new products to miracle supplements, to the dangers of fast food and eggs, It can be very difficult to tease out the relevant, important information, and keep it top of mind when we go wandering through the grocery store aisles. It is important to find unbiased sources of information we can rely on.

Food businesses like to say that consumer demand drives corporate decisions

Is this always the case? There may be many decision that are not driven by consumer demand. Once a corporation gains the majority of market share, they begin to gain pricing power and can dictate terms to grocers, shippers and farmers. These effects are most clearly seen in monopolistic situations, but it's important to realize that they exist in many other situations as well - when just a few major players hold the majority of the market. These effects may be known as cartel effects, and they can result in grocers being forced to remove competing products from shelves, shipping companies being prohibited from transporting competing goods, and cost prohibitive USDA or other local or federal government regulation being enacted to keep smaller operations from entering the marketplace. (To become a USDA certified dairy, for instance, and offer products in most markets would cost an astounding $100,000 - well beyond the reach of most family farmers).

Additionally, corporations may often hide profit driven decisions from consumers . For example, consumers still aren't being told that genetically modified corn is being used as an ingredient in many of their purchases, and were initially unaware that bovine growth hormone was treating their dairy cows until legal actions were pursued.

Consumers, for their part, like to say that Corporations are corrupt, and that they don’t care about our health or the environment.

Let's be honest though, corporate executives are people too - I was one - and many of us have relatives, parents or spouses who work for large corporations. There is nothing inherently evil about a corporation - and almost no one wants to think of him or her self as evil. It is important to remember that the problems that come from corporations are structural and can - with great effort and understanding, be changed.

Additionally, we should realize that consumer demand does drive a number of corporate decisions - this a great source of strength, and makes it possible for us as consumers to influence the decisions of large corporations that we feel most strongly about. Voting with our dollars, educating others about important issues, and speaking out against injustice are powerful allies.

Ocassionally, a consumer, or political group will say that a truly free market will take care of everything.

Unfortunately, we don't have a truly free market. People need information to make good decisions – and our laws allow important information to be hidden from consumers.

Additionally, monopolistic practices create massive opportunities for bad behavior. And when corporations funnel billions and billions of dollars into changing the laws to better benefit their shareholders, the system can become dangerously unballanced, or even corrupted. It is important to realize that as long as markets are not free, we need to keep a watchful eye over any entity that controls massive amounts of resources.

Sometimes we may see communities fighting for employers - even when they have been treated poorly by those same employers. Often, these community members don’t want to lose their jobs.

This is a difficult situation, and a moral individual must acknowledge these fears. It is imperative that anyone seeking to make a change in a system, also takes action to anticipate and assist those who may be hurt. Remedies may include bringing in new jobs, providing for community assistance, or helping to relocate those willing to move. Ideally, living conditions will dramatically improve for all affected in the area, but in the short term, those who will be hurt, must be helped.

None of the statements above are revolutionary. None of these ideas are new. The difficulty in creating sustainable change – change that continues after the initial push is over, and after the good work of understanding the problem has been done, lies in changing the underlying system itself. This includes helping people and organizations to change their self-destructive beliefs as well.

Each side must be listened to. Each side must be respected. Each side’s opinion must be seen as important by all the other members committed to creating a change.

When we see, we see from our own perspective. This is right, and good – for no other person can see from our perspective. But that’s only a part of the responsibility. Everyone should be aware that each person who is engaged in a system – who works there, who shops there, who makes money there, who is elected from there - is important and owns a part of the solution.

Most of us agree that it is wrong to force someone to do something he or she doesn’t want to do. If we want to change a system, before it comes to a place of violent or destructive disagreement, we must have the courage to face our own fears, admit our own weaknesses, and listen to others. We must listen to the fact that we might be wrong – we must accept that our solution will need to be amended.

And we must have the courage to bring the other members of the decision to the table.

Changing the System (Part 1)

This is the first of a three part post regarding Changing Systems.

It gives me great joy to read articles about problems where a well reasoned plan results in positive change to a system – creating a better situation for everyone involved. It gives me hope. Occasionally, however, I read a well intentioned article that leaves me with a gnawing sense of frustration. Sometimes this is because the author frames the problem in one-sided terms or because I feel like the perspectives of the people embedded within the situation were only partially considered, or dismissed out of hand. Often, in these cases, I find the solution well intentioned, but bound to fail because some deeply entrenched stakeholder’s interests are ignored.

The following posts are my attempt to add to our collective set of skills for tackling the complex problems we often encounter in the world around us. I welcome your feedback – I’m well aware that I don’t have all the answers.

We all live among systems. We drive systems, we are paid by systems, we are surrounded by systems. Often we may feel frustrated by the way that some of the systems around us work. We may decide that we want to make a change to a system.

System Dynamics was first introduced at MIT. It has produced a powerful set of tools for those of us who are interested in changing our world for the better. Broadly collected, some call these tools Systems Thinking. This way of thinking allows us to recognize what happens when a number of individuals come together for a common purpose. The lenses of System Dynamics often produce startling insights. I am looking forward to creating a small tutorial on Systems Thinking. Until then, these posts are offered for those who already feel at home thinking in terms of systems and are ready to take a more active approach to tackling change now. Alternatively, for those of us who may have tried to make a change, and been frustrated by the resilience of the world around us, this post may help to create an understanding of where you might be able to get your change unstuck.

When considering what we usually think of as systems (governments, corporations, schools, and in one school of thought, families), it is important to recognize that human-created systems exist without values. This might be viewed controversially, but all I am saying is that Values (as we understand and appreciate them) only exist within conscious minds. Values can be supported or discouraged by the structure of a system, but the system itself does not experience values. (This includes the context of Family System Theory. The important idea is that there is a difference between family members, and the systems they co-create. “Family Values” are those values supported by the family system – whatever those values may be. The idea of “functional” or “dysfunctional” is a values judgment from an observer.)

The qualities that systems might conceivably be thought to “value” are those qualities that pragmatically contribute toward the system’s continued existence, stability or growth - but even those values are not emotionally felt by a system. Other values that we may observe inside a system are, in fact, human imposed. This is an important understanding, as it clearly places the responsibility for designing systems that support human well-being on our own shoulders. Since human systems exist to support humanity, tolerating harmful systems arising from tradition or custom is indefensible. Since our systems are human created, they must be managed by us as well – no matter how complex or resistant they may be to change once they are in place. Those who argue for the “rights” of systems (most often in terms of corporations) are using arguments that only have validity if these systems experience consciousness.

Systems typically exist to fulfill human needs and desires. As long as stakeholders’ purposes are fulfilled, they will continue to support the system. Systems also tend, especially at higher level of complexity, to create unanticipated (emergent) effects. These can be in the form of new feedback loops (think lobbyists), unanticipated growth (pork barrel projects) or new stable patterns in unanticipated and sometimes unwanted forms (corruption, the incumbent effect, etc.) Occasionally an observer or participant will label this behavior with a human value (i.e. “the system is corrupt.”) It is important to remember that systems themselves, while highly complex, do not to our knowledge contain what we consider to be consciousness or self-awareness (We might be better served to think, “this system encourages corruption.”) The difference in perspective can be massively enabling, and just a change in wording can sometimes begin to suggest a remedy to the problem. (Instead of “throwing the bums out,” we might instead look deeper to increase penalties, or decrease opportunities to outside of the system.)

Some of the reasons that systems exhibit emergent behaviors are due to the combined effects of multiple human agents within the systems. These may stem from inherent biases present in the system architects themselves, or they may be due to emergent properties that arise from the complexity of the system itself (for reasons that Complexity Theory seeks to explain).

Within the world of Systems Engineering, many design questions are left to unnamed system designers, many are left to plant managers, and many are left to emerge from the complexity within the workforce itself. Often, this ad hoc approach leads to future problems that can become very difficult to eradicate. I’m encouraged by the excellent work being done by Jay Forrester at MIT with his System Dynamics in Education Project. I just heard of this program through this post and was encouraged by this idea with genuine potential to help our society create better intentioned, better designed systems in the future.

Due to human beings' natural ability to create simple feedback loops, and because of the resilience created by many agents creating reinforcing loops, systems may tend to become more stable and strong over time. Due to the competing goals embedded within systems, and the competing purposes that various system designers and stakeholders embody, systems may appear to contain inefficiencies if viewed from any singular perspective. It's important to realize that this is not necessarily a bad thing. We are fortunate in that systems serve many stakeholders – in fact, that's why systems work at all. Well designed systems operate from principles of voluntary, incentive based exchange, and become more robust as they meet more needs of individual stakeholders.

Important to note is the idea that any stakeholder left out of the system design will modify the system to accommodate his, her or its needs. I call this the Stolen Penny Problem. Typically (although not always) a low status member of a system has some amount of value taken away by the system. That person or entity may then feel justified in recouping two pennies at the system's expense (the justification relies on the involuntary nature of the initial trade). This can, in turn, lead to another party in the system reacting even more harshly to the perception that two pennies have been stolen. In extreme cases, entire systems can cease to function from the exponential nature of the Stolen Penny problem.

Examples of this may be as simple as parents experiencing a disrespectful attitude or disobedience from a child after setting a curfew, management experiencing reduced productivity after instituting a policy of longer work hours, or, plants being relocated away from cities where the workers’ compensation system is habitually abused.

Since human systems themselves appear to be essentially without values, it becomes important that the inevitable impact of systems on people are carefully considered and designed for. This might take the form of allowing a child to stay up as late as he or she wants one night a week. It might take form as down time purposefully unaccounted for during shift changes to accommodate a wide range of diverse needs (including daycare arrangements, communication about new kinks in the machinery to be aware of, or good old-fashioned friction-easing gossip). Or it might look like ambiguity and flexibility deliberately engineered into bonus programs to allow for the possibility of rewarding unforeseen acheivements, or sick leave policies that appear “poorly defined” but are in fact left deliberately vague to allow for a variety of emergency family situations.

If human personality and individuality is not anticipated and appreciated, many stakeholders may end up dissatisfied and as a result the system will function poorly, creating unforeseeable negative repercussions in unexpected places. Excellent system design only occurs where all stakeholders have been included equally in the process and when the process is managed with wisdom and dignity. It may sometimes occur that managers, supervisors, parents or other high status individuals will expect that their views should be more completely adhered to or more thoughtfully considered during the design process, but this is in fact opposite to what intelligent design might recommend. Since higher status generally confers the ability to adjust the system after it is implemented, it is in fact the low status individuals, who will have less say in ongoing operation, whose views may wisely be more carefully considered during the design process, (so as not to introduce a Stolen Penny problem that can be extremely difficult to correct after implementation.)

In short, when we find systems difficult to change, it is because we have not understood the competing goals of all stakeholders. Very often we may not even be aware of all of the stakeholders to a system or how those parties provide their feedback.

Until this point, this has been largely a theoretical piece. In my next post, I’d like to consider some real world examples of systems – especially those with unacknowledged stakeholders operating through unaccounted-for communication channels.

I hope this post has some value in the continuing search for a better future. Please let me know if you find anything helpful, or if you have any suggestions.