Stafford Beer to Fritjof Kapra LO13067

Doug Reeler (dreeler@ctpop01.iafrica.com)
Sat, 29 Mar 1997 11:42:53 +0000

Thanks Arthur Battram for your brief insight into Stafford Beer, Allende
and networking. My response is motivated by the bit of synchronicity here
because I and a colleague, John Clarke, from South Africa, are currently
connecting with a bunch of others from Canada, the Netherlands, Columbia
and other places, around a process called Syntegration and an OD systems
model called the Viable Systems Model pioneered by Stafford Beer and
others. Connections to 'the learning organisation' is both organic and
exciting.

Being an LO dilletante/eclecticist, it is particularly exciting to see the
increasing concurrence (hopefully towards more willing and active
conspiracies - ie breathing togethers!) between many disciplines being
drawn together by a growing consciousness of the need for systems
thinking. I am reading the "Web of Life" by Fritjof Kapra and am
enthralled by the notion of 'deep ecology' as the anticipated foundation
of all systems thinking and I suppose a future global consciousness of
viable and sustainable economies and societies.

The challenge for me is connecting my fairly narrow world of organisation
development systems thinking to wider and deeper arenas of systems
thinking that place organisations in their fullest context of economy,
society and environment, locally (deeply) to globally (widely). Truly
creative and sustainable learning organisations need to be defined by
these deeper and wider contexts. How do we connect the incredible
valuable notions of "learning organisations" to such contexts?

The more I think or read systemically the more of a novice I feel...

Doug Reeler
New Horizons Development Services
146 ST. Kilda Road
Lansdowne
Cape Town
South Africa
7780
Phone (021) 6961475
Fax (021) 6962344
dreeler@iafrica.com
www.mspring.co.za/~horizons

-- 

"Doug Reeler" <dreeler@ctpop01.iafrica.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>