David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join in at 1-866-451-1451.
In the third episode, he more explicitly laid out the ideas and system thinking that he would be covering for the season. The sessions are recorded and available on the Internet for playback.
A digest of the first segement of the third episode (that refers to the previous two episodes) follows.
— begin digest —
[04:04] In essence, the major point is that there’s a difference between systems thinking and analytic thinking in all of my presentations. And the easiest way to think about that is to think in terms of: systems looks at connections; analysis looks at parts.
[04:25] So those that are systems thinkers, actually usually only see connections, they actually don’t have much interest in the parts, whereas analysis types, very much, are into the parts. Tthey really get excited about the parts, so much so, that they subdivide the parts into more parts. Then they divide those parts into further parts. And they spend their life looking for parts of parts of parts.
[04:56] Whereas those that are thinking more in terms of the systems processes, look for: where are the connections? what do the connections mean?
[05:07] And in my world that’s much closer to life and living, less to do with parts, but that was an important point last time.
[05:15] Then we showed a picture of an Iowa facility, with flowers and whatever, in front of it. Aand then we moved on to that funny thing of the image of the sixth extinction, simply having to do with, we know that the Earth was faced with five extinctions of most of Life, from essentially 80% to 95%, based on scientific extraction of what we found
[05;47] And so beginning about one and a half billion years ago, up until a few hundred thousand years ago, there was almost mass extinction of all life. And of course, humans had nothing to do with it. Now, we have a sixth extinction, we call it, and this one is primarily initiated, organized, pushed by humans. And it’s the one we not normally call climate change, which a good share of this show, which will have to do with climate change and the whole idea of: is it too late to address this climate change. As I’ve told you, told you, told you, sort of boringly redundant, sorry.
[06:31] And then the next slide had to do with the distinction, or a difference, that seems to matter, having to do with man, as the man part of humans, somehow really enjoys, or really gets into, overpowering Nature. In fact they even enjoy killing Nature and when Nature is not around to kill, they tend to start a war so they can kill each other instead.
[07:00[ So, somehow humans have should always say a few defects. And those defects showed up in that slide seven.
[07:07] Then we went on to differences, and looking for differences that make a difference, and if you remember that image, it was a little screaming boy at a sports event with his mother, and sister-in-law mother, next to him. And he was screaming and yelling and shaking his fist, like a real man. And of course the two women thought he was extremely funny. And the audience of course, I’m sure, thought he was very funny. When he gets older, he’s not quite so funny, as being masculine. Then, on the other hand, we saw this nurturing female, which was a small girl, trying to lift up part of a statue which was a statue looking somewhat like Jesus buried under the cross trying to carry it off to where it’s supposed to go. And she was upset. It was too heavy. It looked too bad. And so she tried to help carry the cross not knowing it was simply a statue.
[08:09] That image, or those two images, but the joint image was to depict a difference that made a difference.
[08:15] Then we moved on to human values, or shall we say lack thereof, and I showed you a dual picture of climate change Greta and Donald Trump and and some explanation about why they’re different. And they are quite different.
[08:35] And then we moved on to 10, which was an mage of the inside of my house, my facility, this four-story structure, and the fundamental importance of a four-storey stair in this structure. It’s good for exercise, good for a sense of aspirations. It’s great. I tend to really like stairs. Tend to not like elevator.
[08:59] And then of course, the last image was of those 5,000 books that I have within this facility. So in essence, it’s sort of a miniature library. And as I pointed out, those books are furniture in my mind, but it’s furniture I like dealing with, and moving around.
[09:18] Then we moved on to 10 ideas, if you recall. And I wanted to talk about 10 ideas that help you move on, or help you understand what you’re dealing with, and how to deal with hopelessness
[09:35] Five were covered, five were not.
[09:39] First was double bind
[09:41] Second was the digital. Somehow humans love the digital, in politics, in mathematics, in computer science. Almost all of this comes at the behest of Aristotle.
[09:56] Aristotle also loved digital, loved to. Therefore Aristotle is the godhead of computer science as we came to know it. Digital, I find to be a serious problem because we humans like to choose A or B. We have trouble putting A and B together. But later on I’ll be talking about, at some length, the idea of both plus more, meaning how conceptually you put A and B together, so you can move on to more, because more matters. A and B is generally pretty trivial. Like, for example, the difference between being a Republican and being a Democrat these days, the difference is somewhat trivial.
[10;41] Sure, fundamental very important, as much to do with the short term, and also has to do if there will be a long term. But, in essence, it’s the more that matters most, and we have trouble getting to the more.
[10:57] And then we went on to this idea of entropy, and talking about the six dimensions from zero to fifth, which later on we’ll talk about in some depth.
[11:12] And then we move to the notion of the difference between change and changelessness, and that we’ll talk about later. But, in essence, changelessness is the notion of culture: how to feel secure, and things not changing. It’s the way they always were, or, in politics, going back to the good old days, which of course didn’t exist. But you want to go back there, because it’s somehow sweet, kind, nicer, which is all untrue.
[11:43] And then, last but not least, is the notion of leadership, and why people somehow like to be led by others. Somehow most humans do not like to lead themselves. Are they afraid? Are they lazy? Have they no idea? So, they end up with very funny kinds of leaders in society, where, in essence, we end up with things like forms of governance, which democracy is the one that we abide under, at least in the U.S. And the Greeks pointed out that that democracy is a horrible form of governance, but it’s better than all the rest, except perhaps for anarchy.
[12:30] Anarchy is defined as regulating yourself. Indeed, outside of France and the U.S., self-regulation is considered quite a good. In those two countries it’s considered, shall we say, quite bad. But that has to do with leadership not liking people governing themselves, so they give it a very bad name in both countries. We’ll come back to that a bit later. It carries over into how tomanage a company, how to manage corporations, how to lead.
[13:03] Okay, those were the 10 items which we only touched on.
[13:07] Maybe it’s worth noting that we should keep in mind definition, such as the definition of an egotist. And often when we choose a leader, corporate or government, we’re worried about those that are egotist. And an egotist is clearly defined as — pay attention! — a person of low taste, more interested in himself, than in me. Is that funny? You’re not laughing. You should be laughing.
[13:46] And then, of course, we come to a set of conclusions from the above, which I will go through those in a little more detail after our break.
[13:57] But the first one has to do with time, and why it’s important to include time when we’re doing cost-benefit analysis. Or shall we say, not analysis but appraisal. And we’ll talk about that later on.
[14;12] In addition, I have this creed that I like to live by, which is: if in doubt, you don’t know how to behave, be nice. And when we talk about Prisoners Dilemma, we’ll talk about how you always win a Prisoners Dilemma, if you begin by being nice. Aand it it’s really quite something.
[14:32] And then of course we move on to four more items which we’ll get to after break, where the first is planning. That has to do with something you shouldn’t do, unless you want humor.
[14:50] A plan is great when you’re on break, so you and your friends can sit around and look at the past plan, because it’s a good source of humor. Plans are great for humor when you’re on break, just don’t follow them. Okay I believe we’re ready for a break, or not. Oh, one minute, okay.
[15:08] Anyway, planning is something that we laugh about. I was taught that by one of the greatest planners in the world, Hasan Ozbehkhan, who started various organizations relative to planning, and he was a professor at the Wharton School of Business and was fantastic at teaching how not to plan, because he was considered the world’s greatest planner. He was fantastic.
[15:37] Next is the idea of strategic thinking. And many of you I taught to be strategic. Or you ask, what is your strategy for this? And again that is something I would dump. Bbecause if you read chapter 9 of the great book on strategy of 150 years old, now, chapter 9 points out that strategy is deceit. If it’s not deceit, it’s not strategy. So, if you like being deceitful, fine, go ahead and be strategic. But, the strategy, according to the masters of it, you shouldn’t even share with those around you, because you can’t trust them and besides, you can’t let them know what the deceit is that you’re planning.
[16:28] Next is nature. And, I’m going to argue that we have to get over hierarchy, dump hierarchy, because there is no hierarchy in nature, even though Darwin and many other past biologists claim there is a hierarchy, and of course humans are the top of the hierarchy. For me that’s mostly bullshit. And I’ll explain that in some detail, give you examples.
[16:55] And last, but not least, the conclusion is how to move on to change and leave changelessness behind. And changelessness, for me, is more or less defined by culture. We use culture to pretend things have always been this way and always will. We pay a high price for that. because nature is always changing. and we’re always out of step with nature.
— end digest —
For those who warch live on Bold Brave Tv on Wednesdays at 6pm ET,
callers can join in at 1-866-451-1451
On Youtube, the playlist for What to Do When it’s Too Late is cumulating at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2mJRFNbd_wh_gUDGJLfodvc9zajaTOES .
Podcasts:
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0TYTNH3y0Wf9mwMoObX8V2
- iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/146472062
- Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/5cab6c00-d2de-4822-9b52-639c99895f62
- Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/show/1000629752
- Podcast Addict: https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/what-to-do-when-it-s-too-late/4838860
- Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/what-to-do-when-its-too-late-5608047
- JioSaavn: https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/What-To-Do-When-Its-Too-Late/1/5cvNGlki6z4_
- Apple Podcast (to come)
David Ing blogs at coevolving.com , photoblogs at daviding.com , and microblogs at http://ingbrief.wordpress.com . A profile appears at LinkedIn , and an independent description is on Wikipedia .
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