antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 5:05 pm on August 10, 2020

Schema Mapping – Thinking Can Triumph over B****** on Twitter: “Dear ‘systems thinkers’ ‘change agents’ & anyone interested in recalibrating; life, fulfilment, stimulation, the economy, the planet – for a post covid world. Here are the two most influential systems thinking documents ever written (1977). https://t.co/BlR2gaRL03 https://t.co/OuIdX92dBb” / Twitter

antlerboy - Benjamin P Taylor 8:10 am on September 13, 2020

On Facebook in the Ecology of Systems Thinking group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2391509563/permalink/10158370423399564/) , Robert Lamb said:

“It was called the ‘wiring diagram’. John Hoskyns – who had one of he first systems houses – prepared it as an analysis of why it was so hard to do business in the UK at the time, and what to do about it. It was adopted by the Tories and became the Thatcher revolution.”
Wait – it was the spur for Thatcherism? That’s not a great endorsement of anything!
Why should being easy to do business be a systemic goal?
I sense the nemesis of libertarianism looming…
Moreover, it takes as its premise “The principal objective is to persuade the electorate to reject Socialism, and also to reject its continued promotion by the trade union leadersfiip, regardless of how the people have voted”.
I’m sure its authors would love Boris and Donald.

my response:
well, that’s kind of the point! John has picked out these two pieces as both rigorous and influential – not a moral judgement.
I think that’s interesting in itself (John has a particularly strict rationalist requirement for systems thinking) and the ethical element adds an additional twist – systems thinking isn’t ethically predetermined (unfortunately), it can be used for all kinds of outcomes, including those we’d judge very negatively.
In fact, it could be argued that the actual uses of systems thinking have been negative…
So I think that’s the start of a powerful conversation, potentially…

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