[Dialogue] Social process triangles

[R Williams]

I can't really can't speak to Wayne's second paragraph, but without knowing the origins, it all seems to make pretty good sense.  Pardon my simplicity, but kind of reminds me of when my washing machine gets overloaded on one side during the spin cycle and the tub starts knocking and the whole machine, if left in that state long enough, burns out.  If the social process, or "system" as I prefer to call it, which can function only as a whole made up of interdependent, "peer" parts, gets out of balance, the whole system, and all of its parts, becomes dysfunctional.
 
The analysis we did 40 years ago, I believe, still holds, perhaps even more so today.  The economic is overwhelmingly dominant; the political, obscene lackey to financial special interests and corporate lobbyists, has become more subservient to the economic than ever; and the cultural is so badly collapsed and not a factor that the economic has replaced it as the "meaning-giving" dynamic.  Human worth has come to be determined by the acquisition of economic wealth, and the value of everything that is not human is determined by its utilitarian value to humans as we seek to acquire more.  In the midst of this, the whole social system is failing, to the detriment of not only the poor, powerless and disenfranchised, but in the long-term to the demise of all.
 
Our wisdom back then, which I believe is relevant to this day, was that the way we begin to re-balance the system is by coming in through the cultural.  For me this means beginning by re-building our mental models and re-writing our stories about reality and what it means to be human in a world where ultimately everyone thrives or no one does.
 
Randy
 
-- On Wed, 1/19/11, Wayne Nelson <wnelson at ica-associates.ca> wrote:


From: Wayne Nelson <wnelson at ica-associates.ca>
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] Social process triangles
To: "Colleague Dialogue" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Wednesday, January 19, 2011, 8:59 AM



If what John Baggett said about the ideas of religion and culture mediating homeostasis and the role of religion and ethics in shaping social processes is accurate, that does help unravel the mystery of the imbalances. I’ve never quite been able to get past the content on that question to see the structure of the thinking. I helps me make sense of the social processes in a new way.  

Does anyone know more about the thinking behind ‘imbalances’?  It makes sense when you say it and it is a good container for the ‘meta-thought’, but I’ve never really had a clue about the foundations of the mental model. 

\\/

"W. J."  wrote:


Then there was the origin of the 'unbalanced' triangular model, in which we tried to articulate how each of the categories in a triangle--foundational, etc., etc. was dominant/tyrant, etc., etc.




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Wayne Nelson - ICA Associates Inc
ICA - 416-691-2316 - - - Cell – 647-229-6910
http://ica-associates.ca


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