Some reflections on OST, Bin Laden, etc.

[Artur F. Silva]

Some notes on Winston and Harrison's comments:

At 01:14 18-10-2001, Winston Kinch wrote:

>Artur wrote: "...the main point I think that must be reviewed is the
>principle "whatever happens is the only thing that should..."
>I thought it was "could have" (not that this necessarily helps much, but
>still different I think...)

Yes, you are right, Winston. My mistake, sorry.

It's interesting because after translating the correct version (with "could")
to Portuguese, then when retranslating it back to English I always get
"should" instead of "could", due to the overal meaning of the sentence.
My bad English, probably.

But I think the rest of the argument still aplies. That doesn't mean that
I am "sure" that my conclusion is the correct one - only that when I
change "would" for "could" the same argument can be applied, in its
general terms, I think.

At 15:50 18-10-2001, Harrison Owen wrote:

>At 12:35 AM 10/18/01 +0100, Artur wrote:
>
>>5.5. Hence, organizations and countries live in constrained situations, and
>>at the social level the self-organization of Open systems rarely apply,
>>because
>>we face closed or constrained systems.
>>
>>6. So, for me, Open Space and/or OST happen only in situations where
>>those "normal" constraints are removed or circunvened - or where constraints
>>are accepted as constrains to deal with, and not as "givens" to please the
>>sponsors.
>
>Which brings me to the whole notion of a "closed system."  Such a system
>never existed. The notion was first generated in a laboratory environment
>in an effort to control variables in an experiment.

I agree with you, Harrison. Indeed I tried to avoid the notion of "closed
system"
(as they don't exist) and use always "constrained systems" (but one "closed"
skipped my attention ;-((

>Then some young kid comes along and says the old dude is buck naked.
>
>The "young kid" in this case was all those wild folks who developed Chaos
>Theory

Chaos Theory was born from the study of "situations far from equilibrium".
It doesn't mean that chaos theory can always be applied and one has
to know when it is correct to apply it or not.

Maybe we are today in a situation "far from equilibrium" and that's why
(maybe) we can apply Chaos theory to it and that is also the reason why
one can say that we live today in a "transformative moment". But not all
situations and moments are like that...

And, no, I don't think that all systems are trully open - some are
severally constrained. I understand that the "informal system" is
always working, and you gave in one of your books a very good
example of how it works. But I claim that even the informal system
can be severally constrained.

Two examples:

1. de Geus showed in "The Living Company" (and before in his first
HBR article) that long living companies - that work like open systems - are
a small minority and the majority of companies don't live for centuries but
only for 20-30 years, including many of Fortune 500 ones. He claims that
those companies have severe learning disabilities (maybe specially in
"unlearning", I agree). I think that one can say that those companies
are "constrained" and not "fully open".

2. The same is true about a country. Maybe that is not obvious in USA,
but it is clear here in a small, not very developed country, with a strong
Catholic tradition. We are constrained in any decision we would like to
take. In fact it is not worth while to vote in elections here. To have any
influence in Portuguese affairs it would be more useful to vote in the USA
elections ;-)

And even more than us are the under-developed countries constrained.
The French (Marxist) economist Charles Bettelheim showed in the 60's
that the notion of under-developed countries (and that is even more true
of the concept - or is it a fraud? - of "developing countries") is wrong,
as it assumes that those countries can be developed like the others.
In fact "under-developed countries" are exploited countries, with a
distorted economy, that will never (except for some exceptions
that confirm the rule) be "developed". For them to develop would imply
to change the relations they have with the developed countries - indeed
(my words) to destroy the economy of the developed countries. And
that is what they are trying...

A final comments - is any one out there a reader of Science Fiction?
If so (or not) I strongly recommend Isaac Azimov's initial trilogy on
"Foundation", of 1951-53 (later, in the 80's more 3 books have been
published). The initial ones are "Foundation", "Foundation and
Empire" and "The Second Foundation". They describe how the
"Inter-Galactic Empire", that lasted for thousands of years, was
destroyed from the interior and what happened latter.... Much more
interesting, and maybe "real", than the news on TV...

Have a nice week end

Artur
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