[Dialogue] Social Process Imbalance and Pressure Points

[James Wiegel]

From an historical perspective, you would have to look in the archives, I think, in one of the plenary addresses late in the summer of 71.  I have some recollection of Gene Marshall working on this.  The motivation came from wanting to have some sort of a pull together of the research of that summer before everyone left.

Jim Wiegel
Jfwiegel at yahoo.com

On Jan 19, 2011, at 11:34, steve har <stevehar11201 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe the imbalance idea likely came from
> General Systems Theory & Kenneth Boulding
> The balancing is a notion in feedback/feed forward loop logic
> 
> For example 
> one side of the teter-totter goes down the other goes up; or
> 
> if you add gas to your car the gas level in the car goes up and the gas level in the gas station goes down.
> 
> The idea is to represent change in a system  not a static model. There are moving parts in systems and "flows"
> 
> At a gas station...there is a pressure point -the valve at the pump - if you change the pressure point change happens and gas flows 
> 
> When you do this the car's gas tank is balanced to a new level when a valve in the gas pump notices the change in pressure.
> 
> Often systems have three [or more] parts for example the hot water heater, the bathtub, the kitchen sink [with related valves]
> 
> So imbalance triangles and pressure points were attempts to visualize ways to make change in a system... to rebalance an imbalance- in a 3 part system. 
> 
> Without pressure points, flows, imbalances  you are left with a static model in which there is no place for change. It seems to me we wanted to represent opportunities to make social change not stasis.
> 
> The establishment process  lives with or is the economic tyrant [to use the rather quaint terms of the time]; 
> 
> The disestablishment is the political ally [like a "loyal" political opposition], 
> 
> The transestablishment or the cultural process is the  meaning making dynamic that tells a new story and "re balances" the social order by changing the system.
> 
> The model is genius design and profound thinking for the 1970s; time marches on. There are tools and simulations that really are dynamic now not artful representations. It is a bit like comparing an old static photo to a new video. 
> 
>  It would be very interesting to update some of the social process triangle work with some of these new software tools like Stella & iThink.
> 
> It would be splendid piece of creative work to upgrade the social process triangles to current times;  something like this video clip where Twyla Tharp takes a dance step from long ago and makes a splendid ballet called "Bakers Dozen". See: http://poss.posterous.com/34574499. 
> 
> I think we could make a splendid "ballet" out of the social process triangles.
> Taking brilliant models from the past and dusting them off for current times seems exactly what a new ICA era should do.
> 
> For a picture of how people seem to be making models like the social process triangles now see:http://www.systems-thinking.org/intst/int.htm
> 
> Thoughts? Steve Harrington
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