Michael McMaster
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

Daniel, seems like in 2002 you hadn’t discovered the Santa Fe Institute and its studies of complex adaptive systems. No matter, you still do a great job here. Your Burrows quote, and more that follows in your article give this maybe my highest rating of your work at the same time I have the most arguments with it. Interesting. The Burrows quote, in part, “to fulfill the potential of humankind, we need to go beyond the development of individual talents … to realize the full capabilities of the human species.”

We need to explore/discover the nature of people working together. This implies, although you don’t say it explicitly, that our organizations can and should be more intellligent that any individual human being can be. This is my work. That is I don’t think we can successfully tackle the larger issues until we can become competent and developing intelligent organizations — which, I think, means we need to focus on and develop “for-purpose” organizations, meaning to me commercial enterprise where the goals can be visionary but also clear. If we can’t master organization at this level, then I think we have absolutely no chance of handling larger social political organization.

You say we have to reclaim the voice, the power and responsiblity of true citizens, rather than mere consumers. I would add to this “or mere voters” in faceless political systems that are not of a human scale. As you say, “The scale of local, participatory democracies”, I’d say democratic principles, which would then present us the opportunity that “any decision should be taken at the scale and by the people who are directly affected by it”. And you put “central authority” in its proper place.

I take issue with your view of systems theory as circulatory processes of maintenance and self-renewal. My issue is that emergent evolution and theories of complex adaptive systems are much better descriptions (and provide better tools for thinking) that any circular systems. These are based in non-linear gains and no circularity is required even though in some occasions may occur.

I do like your visionary statement that “rich diversity of locally adapted communities aim to participate appropriately, at the spatial and temporal scale — but not circulatory processes.

Your statement of co-operation, which may not yet be possible without corrupting political institutions, is not at best a “bottoms-up” process and more than it is “to-down”. I believe we need to grapple with the CAS model which is full interaction of the whole and bottom or top are not the relevant issues.

I am attempting to make distinctions that will bring complex adaptive systems (CAS)theory into more focus. Then we can apply the “kicker”. That is CAS, the systems we are needing to deal with are unique. All life is a complex adaptive system — with the adaptive function inherited or programmed in. But, when the agents of the systems are independently intelligent, independently choosing beings, (we call them human beings) the nature of the CASs changes quite dramatically. This is what we are now beginning to grapple with.

I’ll be posting more about this later. In the meantime, despite all the critical comments I’ve made, this is wonderful thought provoking article.

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Michael McMaster

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Design4OrganizationIntelligence, complexity, CPA,transformation@Monsanto,BP,Unilever,https://WWW.transformativeorg.com michael@disruptiveconsulting.ca