2. How systems and people shift

Seeing systems, groups, and people as living processes.

Forming a“castell” or human tower in Barcelona. (Image: Jodi Boixareu)

This class delves into a process view of systems, groups and people, and asks the question, “How do things shift?” We will put on a living systems lens and inquire into emergence. We will look at groups as relationship systems and inquire into interdependence. We will look at individuals through the lens of development and seek to understand what informs and shifts behavior.

Lecture and activities

• Activity: Joanna Macy’s Systems Game, and other ways to experience these ideas
• Activity: The omelette game as a way to gauge inner life
• Lecture and discussion: the essential ideas of complex systems, and how they show up in social systems

Key concepts

• Emergence
• Social practices
• Multigenerational transmission and social autopoiesis: the processes of replicating social patterns
• Enculturation, introjection and trauma: the forces that shape us