From The Side View, November 30, 2021:
A theory of change that can account for beauty and generate life
This article is an exercise in speculative reasoning. It is a response to the feeling that the multiple crises we face cannot be addressed by thinking with any of the existing theories of change or models of systems dynamics that are available to us today. This article is also a critique of complex adaptive systems thinking and all of the complexity science that is based on it. Because we are steeped in the logics of complex adaptive systems thinking, everyone is caught in a closed loop of escalating complexity and accelerating risk. In this article, I propose a new theory of change that has the potential to create new intentional states in people, and as such, new behaviors. Unlike the logics of complex adaptive systems thinking, where each person is a potential opponent, and every environment is a potential threat, this new theory of change—which I call “a theory of complex potential states”—prepares us to open up to new potentials that are offered in every relationship and every environment.
Part One: The Problem Situation
Our current theories of change are invested in the dynamics of crisis.
The deep codes embedded in our theories of development and evolution—such as progress, competition, adaptive pressure, and survival drives—are root causes of the escalating complexity and increasing systemic risk that characterize our time. Even imagining as a response that we are under threat from climate, or that the lifeworld is being threatened by us, is itself entangled in these codes and leads to self-fulfilling prophecies.
Humans create self-fulfilling prophecies because our causal theories of change are themselves causally implicated in the world we create. Because we are reflexive, predictive, and intentional beings, we deliberate, decide, and act based on mental models we share on how the world works. These models change over time. For example, the idea that an external agent created the universe is based on a construction theory of change that was prevalent in premodern monotheistic cultures. In premodern polytheistic or panentheistic cultures, the origin story was based on a developmental theory of change—either from the union of male and female energies, or the developmental unfolding of a primordial egg. More recently, many of our theories of change are based on evolutionary dynamics. These have proliferated into a broad spectrum of models, from the original Darwinian theory to models of complex adaptive, chaotic, chaordic, and emergent systems.
In its original form, Darwinian evolution depended on two basic dynamics: (1) random mutations in individuals resulting in genetic drift across breeding populations, and (2) changes in the environment. The mutations are blind to environmental changes, and environmental changes are unresponsive to the mutations. “Natural selection” is a random coincidence that occurs when the change in the environment just happens to increase or decrease breeding prospects across some populations (and not others) and some individuals (and not others). This change could be slow and incremental, eventually leading to sub-populations that no longer breed together, eliminating the hybrid traits. Eventually, the disadvantaged population becomes extinct, and the new population emerges as a new species. This change could be dramatic and swift, wiping out entire groups of species, and setting the stage for new lineages to found later forms.
The point here is that the original Darwinian model is not a story of survival drives, adaptive pressure, and striving to survive—it is a story about rolling the dice.1 ....
....MUCH MORE
