John and Alberto wrote- > But you are racist, aren't you? > > I am. I admit it. I'm not proud of it, and I try to suppress racist > *acts* everytime, but I am perfectly aware that racist thoughts > cross my mind all the time. Sorry for the length, sometimes somethings I go back and read seems so appropriate for capturing so many things in one crystallized area. The thought of constant monitoring and auditing our belief systems is *work*, and good societies, friendships and relationships are not without a struggle. The complexity of the world means that there is an interplay that can be lost in the things we do/say. >From "The Fifth Discipline" (typos all my fault) The earth is an indivisible whole, just as each of us is an indivisible whole. Nature (and that includes us) is not made up of parts within wholes. It is made up of wholes within wholes. All boundaries, national boundaries included, are fundamentally arbitrary. We invent them and then, ironically, we find ourselves trapped within them (and earlier) There are many ways by which the subconscious gets programmed. Cultures program the subconscious. if you grow up in a society that discriminates sharply between certain races or castes, you will literally see and interact with people differently from the way you will if you grow up in a culture that is less race or case-conscious. Beliefs also program the subconscious. It is well established, for example that beliefs affect perception: if you believe that people are untrustworthy, you will continually see" double-dealing and chicanery that others without this belief would not see. Perhaps the most subtly, language programs the subconscious. The effects of language are especially subtle because language appears not so much to affect the content of the subconscious but the way the subconscious organizes sand structures the content it holds. If this is true, how, then, have we been teaching the subconscious to organize information? It is extremely backward in normal verbal language to describe circular feedback processes. So, by and large we give up and just say, in effect, "A caused B, which cased C". But this convenient shorthand suggests to the subconscious mind that "A did cause B." Subconsciously, we tend to forget that "B also caused A." If all we have is linear language, then we think in linear ways, and we perceive the world linearly- that is we think in linear ways, and we perceive the world linearly- that is, as a chain of events. It is impossible for us to grasp the scope of the consequences, but we know they are sweeping. However, if we begin to master a systematic language, this all starts to change. The subconscious is subtly retrained to structure data in circles instead of straight lines. We find that we "see" feedback for thinking becomes embedded. (snip) As organizational theorist Charles Keifer puts it, "When this switch is thrown subconsciously, you become a systems thinker ever thereafter. Reality is automatically seen systemically as well as linearly (there are still plenty of problems for which a linear perspective is perfectly adequate). Alternatives that are impossible to see linearly are surfaced by the subconscious as proposed solutions. Solutions that were outside of our 'feasible set; become part of our feasible set. 'Systematic' becomes a way of thinking (almost a way of being) and not just a problem solving methodology." The subconscious is not limited by the number of feedback processes it can consider. Just as it deals with far more details than our conscious mind, it can also deal with far more intricate dynamic complexity. (snip) That is why practice is so important. Yet today the primary threats to our collective survival are slow, gradual developments arising from processes that are complex both in detail and in dynamics. The spread of nuclear arms is not an event, nor is the "greenhouse effect", the depletion of the ozone layer, malnutrition and underdevelopment in the Third World, the economic cycles that determine our quality of life, and most of the other large-scale problems in our world. Learning organizations themselves may be a form of leverage on the complex system of human endeavors. Building learning organizations involves developing people who learn to see as systems thinkers see, who develop their own personal mastery, and who learn how to surface and restructure mental models, collaboratively. Given the influence of organizations in today's world, this may be one of the most powerful steps toward helping us "rewrite the code", altering not just what we think but our predominant ways of thinking. In this sense, learning organizations may be a tool not just for the evolution of organizations, but for the evolution of intelligence.
