The following description is excerpted from the amazing book,
Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives,
by one of my biggest teachers, Joanna Macy and another amazing woman, Molly Young Brown.

General Living Systems Theory

     Modern science and the Industrial Growth Society grew up together.  With the help of Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon, classical science veered away from a holistic, organic view of the world to an analytical and mechanical one.  The machines we made, to extend our senses and capacities, became our model for the universe. Separating mechanism from operator, object from observer, this view of reality assumed that everything could be described objectively and controlled externally.  It has permitted extraordinary technological gains and fueled the engines of industrial progress.  But, as twentieth century biologists realized with increasing frustration, it cannot explain the self-renewing processes of life.
    Instead of looking for basic building blocks, these life scientists took a new tack: they began to look at wholes instead of parts, at processes instead of substances.  They discovered that these wholes--be they cells, bodies, ecosystems, and even the planet itself--are not just a heap of disjunct parts, but dynamically organized and intricately balanced "systems,"  interdependent in every movement, every function, every exchange of energy and information.  They saw that each element is part of a vaster pattern, a pattern that connects and evolves by discernible principles.  The discernment of these principles gave rise to general living systems theory.
    Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, known as the father of general systems theory, called it a "way of seeing."  And while its insights have spread throughout the physical and social sciences,  spawning groundbreaking derivative theories, the systems perspective has remained just that – a way of seeing.  Anthropologist Gregory Bateson called it "the biggest bite out of the Tree of Knowledge in two thousand years." 

How Life Self-organizes

By shifting their optic to relationships instead of separate entities, scientists made an amazing discovery– amazing at least to the mainstream western mind.  They discovered that nature is self-organizing.  Or rather, assuming that to be the case, they set about discerning the principles by which this self-organizing occurs.  They found these principles or system properties to be awesomely elegant in their simplicity and constancy throughout the observable universe, from suborganic to biological and ecological systems, and mental and social systems as well.  The properties of open systems which permit the variety and intelligence of life-forms to arise from interactive currents of matter and energy, are four in number.

1.  Each system, from atom to galaxy, is a whole.  That means that it is not reducible to its components.  Its distinctive nature and capacities derive from the interactive relationships between its parts.  This interplay is synergistic, generating "emergent properties" and new possibilities, which are not predictable from the character of the separate parts– just as the wetness of water could not be predicted from oxygen and hydrogen before they combined, or just as the tensile strength of steel far exceeds the combined strengths of iron and nickel.  This property of open systems challenges the universal applicability of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that corner stone of classical science on which rest notions of entropy, the running down of all life.

2.  Despite continual flow-through of matter-energy and information, and indeed thanks to that flow-through, open systems are able to maintain their balance; they self-stabilize.  By virtue of this capacity, which von Bertalanffy called fliessgliechgewicht (flux-equilibrium), systems can self-regulate to compensate for changing conditions in their environment.  This homeostatic function is performed by registering/monitoring the effects of their own behavior and matching it with their norms, like a thermostat.  It is understood as a function of feedback– negative or deviation-reducing feedback, to be precise (also called "cybernetics one").  This is how we maintain our body temperature, heal from a cut, or ride a bicycle.

3.  Open systems not only maintain their balance amidst the flux, but also evolve in complexity.  When challenges from their environment persist, they can fall apart or adapt by reorganizing themselves around new, more responsive norms.  This too is a function of feedback– positive or deviation-amplifying feedback (also called "cybernetics two").  It is how we learn and how we evolved from the amoeba.  But if our changing behaviors are not compatible with the challenges we face, and do not achieve a new balance with them, the positive feedback loop gets out of control and goes into "runaway," leading eventually to systems breakdown.

4.  Every system is a "holon"– that is, it is both a whole in its own right, comprised of subsystems, and simultaneously an integral part of a larger system.  Thus holons form "nested hierarchies," systems within systems, circuits within circuits, fields within fields.  Each new holonic level– say from atom to molecule, cell to organ, person to family– generates emergent properties that are nonreducible to the capacities of the separate components.  Far different than the hierarchies of control familiar to societies where rule is imposed from above, in nested hierarchies (sometimes called holonarchies) order tends to arises from the bottom up; the system self-generates from spontaneously adaptive cooperation between the parts, in mutual benefit.  Order and differentiation go hand and hand, components diversifying as they coordinate roles and invent new responses.

Fire, Water, and Web

The mechanistic view of reality separated substance from process, self from other, thought from feeling.  In the systems perspective, these dichotomies no longer hold.  What appeared to be separate and self-existent entities are now seen to be interdependent.  What had appeared to be "other" can be equally construed as a concomitant of "self", like a fellow-cell in a larger body.  What we had been taught to dismiss as mere feelings are responses to our world no less valid than rational constructs.  Sensations, emotions, intuitions, concepts:  all condition each other, each a way of apprehending the relationships which weave our world.
     As systems we participate in the evolving web of life, giving and receiving the feedback necessary for its sustenance, and maintaining integrity and balance by virtue of constant flow-through.  To convey this dynamic process, theorists have used a variety of images.  Fire and water are prominent among them.  "We are not stuff that abides," says Norbert Wiener, "we are patterns that perpetuate themselves; we are whirlpools in a river of everflowing water."  Or we are like a flame, says Leon Brillouin; as a flame keeps its shape by transforming the stuff that flows through it, so do we in the constant metabolisis.  To convey the nature of the relationship between open systems, a frequent image is that of nerve cells in a neural net.  Systems political scientist Karl Deutsch took it as a model for social as well as biological systems, arguing that free circulation of information is essential to health and survival.  By their synergistic interactions neurons differentiate and enhance each other in their diversity.  Weaving an ever more responsive and intricate net, they give rise to intelligence.

The Nature of Our Power

As our pain for the world arises from our systemic interexistence, so does our power.
Yet the generative creativity operating in and through open systems is very different
from our customary notions of power.

Power-over
The old concept of power, in which most of us have been socialized, orig-inated in the
worldview which assumed reality to be composed of discrete and separate
entities--rocks, plants, atoms, people. An Aristotle classifying these entities into
categories or a Newton or Galileo studying their vectors and velocities all worked with
that assumption. Power came to be seen as a property of those separate substances,
inferred from the way they could appear to push each other around. It became
identified with domination. It was equated with the exertion of one's will over oth-ers,
limiting their choices; This is a linear, unidirectional view of causality, in which power is
a zero-sum game: "the more of it you have, the less of it I have"; "if you win, I lose." It
fosters the idea, furthermore, that power correlates with invulnerability. To keep from
being pushed around, defenses are needed. Armor and rigidity make one more
powerful, less likely to be influenced or changed, i.e. dominated by the other.
From the systems perspective this notion of power is both inaccurate and
dysfunctional. The exertion of greater force can certainly serve to defend oneself and
others, but that function is one of protection, not to be confused with the generation of
new forms, behaviors, and potentials. That capacity operates more organically and
reliably from the bottom up, as "power-with." Systems scientists call it synergy.

Power-with
Living systems evolve in variety, resilience, and intelligence; they do this not by
erecting walls of defense and closing off from their environment, but by opening more
widely to the currents of matter-energy and infor-mation. They integrate and
differentiate through constant interaction, spinning more intricate connections and
more flexible strategies. For this they require not invulnerability, but increasing
responsiveness. Such is the direction of evolution. As life forms evolve in complexity
and intelligence, they shed their armor, grow sensitive, vulnerable protuberances--like
lips, tongues, ears, eyeballs, noses, fingertips--the better to sense and respond, the
better to connect in the web of life and weave it further.
We may wonder why power as domination, which we see enacted around us and on
top of us, seems so effective. Many who wield it seem to get what they want-money,
fame, control over others' lives. Yes, they do, but always at a cost to the larger system
and to their own well-being within it. To the social system, power-over is dysfunctional
because it inhibits diversity and feedback; by obstructing self-organizing processes, it
fosters entropy-systemic disintegration. To the power holder himself, it is like a suit of
armor: it restricts vision and movement. Narrowing awareness and maneuverability, it
cuts him off from fuller and freer par-ticipation in life; he has far fewer options for
response.

Power and feedback
Power-with or synergy is not a property one can own, but a process one engages in.
Efficacy is transactional. Take the neuron in the neural net. If it were, hypothetically, to
suppose that its powers were a personal property to be preserved and protected from
other nerve cells, and isolated itself behind defensive walls, it would atrophy, or die. Its
health and its power lie in opening itself to the charge, letting the signals through. Only
then can the larger systems of which it is a part learn to respond and think.
The body-politic is much like a neural net, as Karl Oeutsch asserts. Like the brain,
society is a cybernetic system which only functions well with unham-pered flows of
information. That is how our mind-bodies work. When you put your hand on a hot
stove, you rapidly withdraw it, because feed-back tells you your fingers are burning.
You wouldn't know that if you began censoring your body's reports.
Self-governance requires the free circulation of information necessary to public
decision-making. In the present hypertrophied stage of the Industrial Growth Society,
however, even governments that call them-selves democracies suppress information
unwelcome to corporate interests. We learn daily of high-level cover-ups, a scientific
panel's find-ings officially rejected, a report censored. We have become accustomed to
misinformation and deception about an enormous array of dangers, such as the
relationship of cancer and other diseases to radioactivity, food additives, or household
products. We hear little about the effects and causes of thinning ozone and the
greenhouse effect, even when we're awash in record-breaking floods and hurricanes,
and global food reserves are at an all-time low. This institutionalized secrecy is
understandable in terms of protecting vested interests, but it comes at a high price. For
any system that consistently suppresses feedback--closing its perceptions to the
results of its behavior--is suicidal.

The power of disclosure and refusal
While the concept of power-with summons us to develop empathy, it also calls for
vigilance and assertiveness in responding to the self-organizing needs of the larger
system. It is our systemic responsibility to give feed-back to our body politic, and
unblock that feedback which has been suppressed. This is essential to the Great
Turning from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-sustaining Society. Many of its
unsung heroes are women and men who, often at considerable personal risk, unearth
and disclose important information held from the public.
Our interexistence with others in the web of life does not mean that we should tolerate
destructive behavior. On the contrary, it means we should step in when our collective
health and survival are at stake. That can involve lobbying for laws, or intervening in a
more direct fashion, nonviolently, to remove authority from those who misuse it. This is
not a struggle to "seize" power so much as to release it for efficient self-gover-nance.
Thus we act, not only for ourselves and our own group or party, but also on behalf of
all the other "neurons in the net." Then we are sus-tained by the myriad resources of
that net, which include all our differences and diversities.
Acting on behalf of the larger system, for the common good, is becoming alien to the
mores of the Industrial Growth Society. Corporations, by their very financial structure,
must maximize their own short-term profits, regardless of the impact. Within this
increasingly competitive system, individuals perceive their own self-interest to be in
conflict with the interests of others. Many are so deeply entrenched in this point of
view that they assume activists must be similarly motivated, and label them as "special
interest groups." To act on behalf of the common good can serve overlapping
purposes: it brings needed feedback to the system about challenges it faces, and
transforms the premises under which that system operates. It helps to change the
norms from individual, competitive self-interest to collective, systemic self-interest.

Synergy and grace
When we make common cause on behalf of the Earth community, we open not only to
the needs of others, but also to their abilities and gifts. It is a good thing that
power-with is not a personal property, because, frankly, none of us possesses all the
courage and intelligence, strength and endurance required for the Great Turning. And
none of us needs to possess them, or dredge them up out of some private storehouse.
All the resources we will need arise out of our interactions, as we commit our-selves to
a common intent for our common fate.
     This is the nature of synergy, the first property of living systems. As parts self-organize
into a larger whole, capacities emerge which could never have been predicted, and
which the individual parts did not possess. The weaving of new connections brings new
responses and new possibilities into play. In the process, one can feel sustained--and
is sustained--by currents of power larger than one's own.
     This phenomenon is similar to the religious concept of grace, but distinct from the
traditional understanding of grace, as it does not require belief in a God. Whether
restoring a garden or cooking in a soup kitchen, there is a sense sometimes of being
supported by something beyond one's individual strength, a sense of being "acted
through." This empowerment often seems to come through those for whose sake one
acts. In the last unprotected groves of redwoods, young activists weather the cold
rainy winter and police violence, as they perch in the trees to save them from illegal
logging. Their valor and endurance is not their own, they say, but bestowed upon them
by the great beings they seek to save. "They know we're here; they give us strength."
This kind of empowerment is familiar to many today who work for their own threatened
communities,or for distant peasants ripped from land and livelihood, or for children imprisoned in sweatshops and brothels. Those who risk their lives to pro-tect marine mammals, and those who risk jail to stop paying taxes for weapons, and those who risk their jobs to "blow the whistle" on corrup-tion and deception--they also draw on vaster powers of life. These people, whose numbers are countless, show us what can happen through us when we break free of the old hierarchical notions of power. Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.

A large exerpt from a paper I wrote for my Systems Thinking class with Joanna Macy-

Paradigms, Systems, and Active Imagination

- The role of active imagination in effecting codes and constructs and changing a system.
- Re-organizing our society around new goals and the power of imagination.

    Paradigms are the sources of systems Our systems are created out of our belief systems.
This is a paper about what has the power to catalyze change and re-organization, based on certain systems thinkers and systems theory insights.
   Systems thinking is a scientific model that arose from the life sciences and is characterized by looking not at parts but at wholes. Looking at a problem from a systems perspective requires that the greater web of relationships in which the problem exists be taken into account, including the relationship to the beliefs, map, and world-view out of which the actions arise.
    I would like to introduce you to a model developed by Systems theorist Ervin Laszlo.
In the model, E stands for environment, P stands for percept (situation, input), C stands for constructs and codes, and R stands for response. Contrary to simplistic cause and effect theories, this model demonstrates how we filter our experiences through our constructs before we respond. This explains how two people can have the same experience and totally different interpretations and responses. Laszlo also writes about our tendency to project our codes onto the environment and thus attract experiences that reinforce our codes. This attests to the human tendency to lock into a belief system and worldview and have experiences which validate those beliefs.
    But systems are not fixed, and so this model also shows what conditions inspire the process of change and re-organization. Joanna Macy in her book Mutual Causality describes these conditions.
“When perturbations in the environment persist and produce a continual mismatching between input and encoded norms, the system either becomes dysfunctional or hits on new behaviors which are adaptive to the new conditions.” So, as a result of changes in environment, a systems adaptive function is called into play and catalyzes an exploration process to locate new more responsive constructs and norms around which to re-organize. This ability has been known as evolution, social revolution, change, and in systems terms it is referred to as self-organization. It could be said that it is the changes in environment or experience that result in big changes, but this self re-organization only occurs when the very norms and constructs behind the person or systems operation are effected, questioned, and shifted.
So let’s further explore this often overlooked realm which manifests individually as beliefs and world-view, and collectively as our paradigm. Donnella Meadows in her article on Leverage Points describes paradigms like this…
“The shared idea in the minds of society, the great big unstated assumptions- unstated because unnecessary to state; everyone already knows them- constitute that society’s paradigm, or deepest set of beliefs about how the world works.”
    So, with this in mind, let’s look at our current environmental problem as an example.
There is much emphasis in the environmental movement on petitions, regulations, laws, offender accountability, etc… Our economic system is based on competition and consumption of resources, and from that extend many companies with many practices that are devastating to the environment. But let’s look at an underlying assumption that such a destructive system could be created from. In stark contrast to every Indigenous culture on this planet, the Industrialized western paradigm includes a belief that nature is a stock of resources to be converted to human purposes. It doesn’t matter how much success we get in recycling, carpooling, pollution standards, and environmental protection laws, if this fundamental belief remains unchallenged, there will still be motivation and justification for destructive acts. If we believe we are separate from and superior to nature, then many destructive actions become justifiable and even normal. If we believe we are an interconnected and interdependent part of nature, then those same destructive activities wouldn’t occur to us, and acting on behalf of the environment would be a natural thing to do. It is very difficult to regulate your way to a new world-view, just like it is difficult to water an entire tree by a few branches. Water the roots, and the whole tree is fed, change the paradigm and all the practices that extend from it would change too. This is an inside- out approach to change, based on the understanding that all systems are created out of belief systems.
   I will use another example to illustrate this point. There is a boy who acts out a lot in order to get attention, and has a tendency to get violent. Now he can be punished or even imprisoned, but will these things address his fundamental belief that he is not good enough and that violence is the only way to resolve conflicts? Punishing someone for acting on a false belief doesn’t often make them change that belief. What if instead we show them a healthy alternative belief, and give them an actual experience of the difference in their lives that shift can make? What if we let him hear the stories of ex-violent offenders and the lessons they had learned about choosing violence as a means of communication? What if we had him role play with different challenging scenarios where he can safely explore alternatives to violence? What if we created a justice system based on prevention and psychological social transformation instead of punishment?
    Weather you look at our current economic, educational, justice or health-care systems, you see orientation to isolated instances and individuals, not an emphasis on context, relationship and wholes. Because we do live in a context of relationship and wholes, it is becoming increasingly evident that our systems are running on outdated constructs, and thus are not flexible, functional and responsive to the actual needs of this modern interconnected world. According to Laszlo’s model, if a mismatch in percepts and codes persists, new codes and new behavior are developed by the system. But, sometimes there is a block in the feedback loop that keeps the individual (or group or society) from getting the information necessary to facilitate evolution. Our information system is currently monopolized by a small elite who profit from the public not receiving the feedback of the dysfunction, and not seeing the alternative possibilities. Again, this is where the power of art, theater, storytelling, and other imaginative media come into play. Through story, a reality that wasn’t known about can be illumined, and also a possibility that wasn’t before imagined can be shown.
     Donella Meadows, in her article on Leverage points, defines a leverage point as a place within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. She then goes on to List 12 places to intervene, and ordered them by effectiveness.The second on the list of effective arenas to intervene was…
“The mindset or paradigm out of which the system- its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters- arises.”
She then goes on to say that it is not easy to change a paradigm, and is resisted more than any other change. But she offers some things that do help to change at the level of paradigm, two of which are…

a. point at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm
b. speak loud and with assurance from the new one

   I will focus more on the second angle, because in focusing on an alternative vision, current problems get addressed through their absence or contrast, and solutions or alternatives are not necessarily revealed through critiquing the problems. The role of the imagination is pivotal in this equation. To be able to speak assuredly from a new world, you must first be able to imagine it. This is not a task that we can count on mainstream t.v. to help us with, because it is in the hands of those who have much to gain from the people not being able to imagine, much less manifest a whole new world. I strongly believe that imagining and compellingly articulating a better world is one of the most important tasks of our time.
   We know things need to change, but nature abhors a vacuum. People are not likely to be willing to let go of a way of seeing or being (even if it isn’t working) until they have a good alternative to put in it’s place. In the realm of dreams, goals, and beliefs, intellectual understanding is not enough to shift these deep and sometimes even unconscious undercurrents. This is why we must turn to the domain and languages of the right brain; images, sound, movement, theater, and ritual. These are also the tools through which a new paradigm can be, not just be conceived, but also felt on all levels. And it is what our physical and emotional selves have experienced that actually has the power to transform us on these deeper levels.
   Through theater and storytelling, we are able to vicariously experience, and thus benefit from another’s insights and experiences. If theater and media is created from a new and more holistic paradigm, it has the power to replace people’s constructs about what is possible and desirable. That is a huge beginning step, as Draper Kauffman, the auther of Systems 1 says,“After a new goal is invented, a new program must also be developed to achieve it, not always on the basis of pre-existing programs, but often on the basis of insight.” In my own words, Imagine a better goal, a more fulfilling dream, and then re-organize your life around it.

- Audette Sophia 2003

“Every nation and every man instantly surrounds themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to…their state of thought. Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of some man’s mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers. Observe the ideas of the present day… see how timber, brick, lime and stone have flown into convenient shape, obedient to the master idea reigning in the minds of many persons… It follows, of course, that the least enlargement of ideas… would cause the most striking changes of external things.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Article- Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by, Donella H. Meadows
Donella Meadows, in her article on Leverage points, defines a leverage point as a place within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything. She then goes on to List 12 places to intervene, and ordered them by effectiveness. My orientation and interest went immediately to her top four effective intervention areas, which are:
1. The power to transcend paradigms
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system- its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters- arises.
3. The goals of the system.
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.