Artur wrote -
"1. You refer often to Kaufman's conditions for self-organization. Clearly those conditions are NOT current and they occur only in special situations. So it seems to me that there is a contradiction between your references to those conditions and your persistent affirmations that "there is not such thing as a non-self-organizing-systems". Can you clarify your thoughts about this please?" It may well be just a difference in where I am sitting - but from my view point, there are precious few moments in my existence/experience when Kaufmann's Preconditions are NOT present. For those who have not been following Kaufmann's work the essential preconditions for self-organization as he understands it (and others have a different take on the matter) are 1) A relatively safe nutrient environment. 2) High levels of diversity. 3) High levels of potential complexity (things could fit together in a variety of ways) 4) Space Prior Connections (the stuff is not already organized). 5) A search for fitness. 6) Being at the edge of chaos. I would concede that condition #1 (safety) may not always be there, but all the rest seem to me to be pretty much of an everyday experience. And even #1 shows up more often than we might suspect. I have spent a fair amount of time in some pretty unsafe environments, psychologically and physically - and even in the worst of those, there were moments of rest and safety. And how much time do you actually need? Very little I suspect - in fact one of the strange things about self-organization is just how quickly it takes place when the conditions are "right." Sometimes it seems almost instantaneous. Just think of what we all experience every time Space is opened. From start to organized work - something less than an hour. I would probably happen faster if we didn't have to talk so much. "2. I agree with Masud that the statement is true for "living systems". So when we consider the humans as part of an ecosystem we can see them as a "living systems". But human organizations are not only "living material". Masud gave an example with the financial system, but there are others. An organization is a mix of living people with objects, rules, procedures, hierarchies, etc that are not "living" in the biological sense. Those rules and procedures inhibit, in my opinion, their being "living systems". That's is precisely the reason why we talk about opening the space - the fact that quite often in organizations and even in communities the space is pretty closed. Any comments?" I think my comments to Masud apply here too. It is all about the degrees of freedom and the size of the possibility space. Both of these can be very different in various situations. But I would suggest that process remains the same. Further, if the degrees of freedom were zero and the possibility space reduced to nothing - the organization would be dead. So when we (I) Open Space in an organization that is still alive (and by definition I don't have much opportunity with the dead ones) - I am not so much creating anything new but reminding them of what they already have and are. In words I have used before, creating an Open Space Organization is a waste of time. Every organization is already an Open Space organization; they are just doing it rather badly. The real issue for me is How can they do it better? And what would doing better look like? Which comes back to the question I posed when I opened up this particular space - "how we can reasonably and effectively live in a fully self-organizing world? What is the role of the individual, place of individual initiative, function of leadership, planning . . .?" Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Phone 301-365-2093 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html -----Original Message----- From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of Artur Silva Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 10:16 AM To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Re: Turtles (short) Masud Sheikh <mashe...@cogeco.ca> wrote: HO wrote: "Or put rather bluntly - there is no such thing as a non-self-organizing system. There are only some mildly deluded folks who think they did the organizing. Outrageous for sure, and possibly a break with reality, but that is pretty much where I found myself." I believe the statement "there is no such thing as a non-self-organizing system" is true for living systems, but not for non-living systems. For instance, in any "organization" there are systems of people, who find that the best team-building may be done around the coffee machine or bar, rather than in a classroom, teaching "teamwork". There are other systems (e.g. the financial reporting system) that are non-living. Both the living and non-living systems interact with - and impact - each other. Let me stop here, and invite others to join in Masud - thanks for taking the lead on this. Harrison - there are two things that I don't understand in this last post and in some others from you. I think I have already referred to this, but let's go again. 1. You refer often to Kaufman's conditions for self-organization. Clearly those conditions are NOT current and they occur only in special situations. So it seems to me that there is a contradiction between your references to those conditions and your persistent affirmations that "there is not such thing as a non-self-organizing-systems". Can you clarify your thoughts about this please? 2. I agree with Masud that the statement is true for "living systems". So when we consider the humans as part of an ecosystem we can see them as a "living systems". But human organizations are not only "living material". Masud gave an example with the financial system, but there are others. An organization is a mix of living people with objects, rules, procedures, hierarchies, etc that are not "living" in the biological sense. Those rules and procedures inhibit, in my opinion, their being "living systems". That's is precisely the reason why we talk about opening the space - the fact that quite often in organizations and even in communities the space is pretty closed. Any comments? Artur _____ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do <http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=29915/*http:/info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250> more. Manage less. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
