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Truth and Reality
Posted on May 16, 2013 by Kathryn Alexander
 Business is famous for business owners squeezing every penny out of their employees, which includes; overtime, low wages, no raises, reduced or non-existent vacations and sick pay. However, the deterioration of our educational system that has resulted in a marked reduction in thinking skills suggests that the consequences of poor thinking are imminent.
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Real Life Implications of Systems Thinking
Posted on February 2, 2011 by Kathryn Alexander
Posted by Kathryn Alexander on Wed, Feb 02, 2011 @ 05:44 PM
You may or may not have noticed that GMO alfalfa was deregulated this week. Ho hum. For the organic movement and anyone with a commitment to sustainability that event has been a battle cry. If you've been reading this blog, then you know some of my views and opinions about it, but that's not what I want to talk about today.
Tom Vilsack, Secretary of the USDA, has a history of being friendly and comfortable with Monsanto. This concerned many folks when he was appointed. However...it seems that he fought this as strongly as he could. What happened? The issue is a systems story. Specifically the fact that systems are nested in other systems. What stopped Vilsack was a law, The Plant Protection Law.
This kind of situation is much more common than you might imagine. The foundational cause for this kind of dissonance is how laws are formed. Many people believe that following the law is not only one's duty, but ensures moral and ethical behavior. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Corporations and other specialized interests write and lobby for laws that support their point of view, their products (prohibiting competitive interests), and methods that favor them above their competitors. So we have a law to 'protect' plants being used to put plants at risk.
 Here we have a very rough diagram of how some systems are nested. The exercise is to start at the center (you) and moving out determine how the smaller circle impacts the larger circle. Then reverse the process, how does the larger ci
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