Several people have commented on my posting about our present economic
systems not providing stability. Rol says
>As individuals we WANT stability, but I do not know that we a) NEED it, or
>b) would be healthy within it. Stability is stagnant, and much closer to
>death or strangulation than the actual world we live in. instability is
>anxiety-producing, but I am not at all convinced it is bad.
I agree with this - and all the others who have pointed out the benefits
of instability. My original, maybe naive point was that stability in the
sense of say job security is sought by many, but seems outside the
capabilities of the system.
>From what I have read of Chaos theory in the business context ( Margaret
Wheatley, Ralph Stacey etc.) I get the idea that we can only cope with
limited instability, and that organisations can only function on the
creative, unstable edge for a limited period of time before choosing a new
stable state. Likewise it seems individuals can only live in Argyris's
Model II learning mode for certain periods of time before needing to
return to Model I functioning.
I may be totally misrepresenting what these authors are saying, but I feel
attracted to the idea that organisations and people can only function on
the creative edge of chaos intermittently. This comes back to Rol's point
about stability, health and anxiety. Some anxiety is very healthy, but too
much is very destructive.
A side note on some child psychology - researchers found that when
adventure playgrounds were made safer this resulted in the children's play
becoming more dangerous - there seemd to be a level of danger (anxiety)
the children were comfortable with, and if the playground was made too
safe they had to compensate by taking more risks.
Malcolm Jones
prodeuro@atlas.co.uk
--prodeuro@atlas.co.uk (Malcolm Jones)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>