Meadows on Leverage Points

The "other" ERE. Societal aspects of the ERE philosophy. Emergent change-making, scale-effects,...
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7Wannabe5
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Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Meadows on Leverage Points

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

The purpose of this thread will be discussion of this great article by Donella Meadows on leverage points in systems:

https://donellameadows.org/archives/lev ... -a-system/


NOTE: previously posted by Riggerjack in conversation on value of objectivity in Inspiration category.

Vespasian
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Re: Meadows on Leverage Points

Post by Vespasian »

I read this several years ago and it really changed my thinking.

The analytical systems approach really started being developed in the midcentury. It's a bit puzzling why it would be that late, but I imagine that the impact of large systems themselves had only been recently felt. For example, serious economic thinking didn't arise until the mid 18th century, but that was also at around the time a true global market was opening up — corporate charters were extending European presence into the rest of the world and amassing trillions of dollars in today's money. Then the Industrial Revolution accelerated production and unified many European and global interests. It's here where you see a real world system emerging, and the attendant philosophical paradigm.

You definitely see *systematic* thinking before these periods — Aquinas and the Summa, all sorts of physics treatises, etc. — but conceptualizing the world in its entirety, in its economic, demographic, technological, and political dimensions, has only recently had the opportunity to emerge.
Electing Bill Clinton was definitely different from electing George Bush, but not all that different, given that every president is plugged into the same political system.
Historically, this would be a revolutionary insight. The king is sovereign, he does what he pleases, and the whole system adjusts. But we've reached a point of such complexity that that sort of sovereignty doesn't really exist. The *system* is far greater than any individual. Presidents amount to different faucet styles on the ends of vast pipe networks.

xmj
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Re: Meadows on Leverage Points

Post by xmj »

This was such a good blogpost that I read the book afterwards. Having mucked around with computer systems professionally, a lot of the contents fit the bill of "yes, seen it but haven't had the vocabulary to describe it." Thank you, that was eye opening.

Jim
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Re: Meadows on Leverage Points

Post by Jim »

This was a fantastic read, with a great cathartic culmination with the last point about the power to transcend paradigms.

I tend to think a lot about how immediatly actionable leveraging change against a system can be on a personal level versus how challenging it can be at scale. The availabilty of a personal revelation is much greater than a collective one; e.g. it's easier for me to recognize and curb my spending habits than it is to change a corprate culture of infite growth. It is very depressing to frame the world in the context of "no matter what I do, greedy corporations are going to continue to carbonize the air and eat their own children in the interest of profit."

This is a function of time scaling relatively to the size and breadth of our place in the world. It obviously takes proprtionally less time for an individual to enact a radical change than a megacorp, but the article still points to the fact that the power to transcend the paradigm is the most critical leverage point and at least suggests that that transcendence will begin at more granular (even individual) level. What an uplifting way of ascribing wholistic value to personal revelation and transformation!

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