Tuesday, July 28, 2015

How to Learn Systems Thinking in Understanding the Holism

Systems Thinking is a sensibility, with the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.

Ordinarily, people do not inquire into the matters, they are too much a slave to the conventional way of thinking or follow the mainstream thinking, they just accept what is instilled into their minds, mainly even through the indirect experiences, one side of story or unverified information; for to accept is more convenient and practical, and life is to a certain extent, though not in reality, made thereby easier. Most of the people are in nature conservatives, not because they are lazy, but because they are educated to be compliant with conventional wisdom or group thinking, even superficially. But the time comes when traditional logic does no longer hold true, for you begin to feel contradictions and splits and consequently spiritual anguish, especially in today's hyper-connected digital world, the disruptions come almost overnight, and the knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened. You lose trustful repose which you experienced when you blindly follow the traditional ways of thinking. So what are the Systems Principles you can follow to practice independent thinking, critical thinking or agile critical thinking which has creativity deeply embedded in it?


General Systems Theory is a related modern concept to HOLISM: It says that each variable in any system interacts with the other variables so thoroughly that cause and effect cannot be separated. A simple variable can be both cause and effect. Reality will not be still. And it cannot be taken apart! You cannot understand a cell, a living thing, a brain structure, an organization, or a culture if you isolate it from its context. The relationship is everything. Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” It is a set of general principles—distilled over the course of the twentieth century, spanning fields as diverse as the physical and social sciences, engineering, and management. During the last thirty years, these tools have been applied to understand a wide range of corporate, urban, regional, economic, political, ecological, and even psychological systems. And Systems Thinking is a sensibility—for the subtle interconnectedness that gives living systems their unique character.


Learning to think the Systemic Wholeness: Start with the mediating systemic wholeness with which you experience, remember, know, think, imagine, evaluate, intend, and engage the rest of the intrinsic unity that is the Whole. This wholeness comprises various media that are each functionally contrary to the unitive, fluid and seamless nature of the whole. Firstly, the self-reflecting input medium. All of our senses work primarily by highlighting contrasting distinctions in our field of awareness, such as edges, boundaries, and gradations, with beginnings and ends; they project appearances that stand out at the spatial and temporal backgrounds or foregrounds that surround whatever is being noticed. Secondly, the abstract, conceptual medium with which your self-reflecting experiences are captured, stored and linked to reconstruct the relationships and interactions that exist among the apparent ‘parts,’ ‘events,’ and processes in the matter-energy field from which to make up memory, representations, and extrapolations of the nature, workings, and potentials of the field – is also granular, fragmented and scattered. This is the cognitive medium of concepts.


Systems Thinking is not just a science, but an art as well. It’s an interdisciplinary thought process with deep creativity in it. Dickinson's Poem below well reflects the breadth and depth of the human mind:
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—


The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—


The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
- Emily Dickinson

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