Abstract
As the environments which frame universities and the experiences and interests of our graduates change (Beck 2005), we will need to develop social, economic and environmental praxis that recognises and responds to our vulnerability to complex challenges. For this to occur, we need to be able to address sustainability in terms of being, doing, having and interacting.
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Notes
- 1.
As the problem with media control in any country—is that they could lead to an erosion of democracy per se. It is better to be able to develop critical systemic thinking skills so that one can read through newspapers and are able to locate the different arguments in commentary and editorials that are pro the zero-sum or containerist approaches, pro market and unaware of or denying the interconnections or the impact on wellbeing. The Mail and Guardian newspaper editor stressed that self-regulation is vital for democracy. McDermott, S.K. 2012 ‘Clash of paradigms’ as editors defend self-regulation, Feb 01 2012.
- 2.
I am based at a university department that comprises diverse students from Australia and international locations spanning Cambodia, Indonesia, Africa and Palestine. I am also an adjunct professor at the University of Indonesia, a role which involves mentoring higher degree students and engaging with government departments and ministries. The student base comprises postgraduates. We have students doing master’s degrees and doctoral studies from Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Laos, Vietnam, Canada, New Zealand and many senior public servants and NGO managers from across Australia who study both locally and by distance. Some of our postgraduates also study by distance. I teach postgraduate students within the School of Social and Policy Studies at Flinders University. It spans sociology, social work, politics and public policy. The school takes an interdisciplinary approach to current and emerging issues facing governments and other public bodies internationally. The program’s core curriculum includes topics on public policy, public management, governance, ethics, and research methods. Electives cover a range of specialist areas in public management and administration, including financial, risk, human resource, non-government, organizational and project management; program evaluation; and issues in a range of public policy areas, including culture, the environment, regionalism, cities and housing. Electives can be taken in other graduate programs, including International Development, International Relations, International Business Administration, Environmental Management, Social Administration and Social Work, Asian Governance, Population Studies, Public Health and Educational Administration.
- 3.
The role of educators as members of the Australian government becomes much clearer when one is part of a ‘soft power’ mission to provide scholarships within the region via Australian Development Scholarships and Aus Aid. We need ‘ecology of mind’ in the sense used by Bateson, to see our role when handing out soft koala bears and badges espousing affiliation to organizations. The team spirit associated with shared connections becomes a means to build networks for many purposes.
- 4.
I share some of the examples of challenges that help us to realize that our designs need to be ethical. The 12 is/ought questions in the toolkit provide an excellent starting point for thinking about our designs. By asking the questions, what, why, how, so what and in whose interests, we begin to see the issue in terms of the consequences of our decisions for others (including future generations of life), now and in the future. For example, I discuss current issues that are of concern, the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh, because clothing manufacturers strive for profit, rather than considering the social and environmental consequences of their decisions. I also mentioned many other examples that illustrate the way in which cities are poorly designed.
- 5.
I teach by providing some guidelines for developing a design response by working with those who are affected by the area of concern by locating problems within a broader environment. In order to address complex concerns, we need to understand the interrelationships/interconnectedness and interdependency. We apply the tool of multi-dimensional, multi-stakeholder systems and give examples of complex systems. Interconnections are mapped out using FMA model. Critical analysis is based on questioning the boundary and the environment of the problem. This can be explored through critical heuristic questions and participatory processes with the stakeholders. Contextualisation can be explained using mind maps, represented by rich pictures, stories and pictures, historical examples, scenarios and looking at natural history examples. The issue of ethical responses will be central because it will be taught using the DIS approach that enables the participants as adult learner to locate themselves in relation to others and the environment and to consider what is the case and what ought to be the case in terms of the questions spanning what, why, how and so what. Furthermore, the learner is asked to consider the domains of knowing spanning logic, empiricism, idealism, the dialectic (exploring the implications of one thesis, an opposing thesis or antithesis and discussing the potential for some synthesis and the value of honouring space for diversity) and expanded pragmatism, based on considering the ‘if then’ consequences for others and the environment.
- 6.
We need to understand the history of the social and natural sciences sufficiently to be able to see that mind–body and environment are systemically linked—not hermetically sealed compartments. The divides across the social sciences are associated with enlightenment approaches traced to the interpretation of Descartes statement: ‘I think therefore I am’. Sciences could have acknowledged human beings are part of their environment.
- 7.
Spanning gender relationships, political dynamics, policy on mental health, employment, water- and sanitation-related disease, social conflict, homelessness, public education and capacity building on climate change and poverty-related diseases.
- 8.
According to Wheatley (2009, p. 30): “Even among friends, starting a conversation can take courage. But conversation also gives us courage….As we learn from each other’s experiences and interpretations; we see the issue in richer detail. We understand more of the dynamics that have created it. With this clarity we know what actions to take and where we might also have influence. …. [w]hat gets lost when we stop talking to each other? Paulo Freire…said…we ‘cannot be truly human apart from communication…to impede communication is to reduce people to the status of things’.
‘Without imaginative courage we are likely to be left with public cynicism and despair before the very large challenges that these three areas pose. But with some new pictures of what may be possible we can at least approach these frontiers and think creatively about what justice can be in a world that is so much more complicated, and interdependent, than philosophical theory has often acknowledged’. (Nussbaumn, 2006, p. 409)
- 9.
We come now to the micro-mechanisms by which a small number of individuals make themselves the elite, while others who start out with similar ambitions and opportunities drop by the wayside. The creative elite builds up emotional energy specific to a particular branch of the intellectual field—philosophers, mathematicians, sociologists…whatever constitutes itself as a self-enclosed attention space. Within this space, there is competition over a small number of niches, positions that can receive recognition. Emotional energy in its general form is the sense of enthusiasm, confidence and initiative, in the case of abstract verbal intellectuals they work with ideas that feel successful….In terms of the model of thinking, I have described in Collins (2004, Chap. 5), these intellectuals are engaged in internal interaction rituals, loops of emotional self-entrainment that give them both confidence in what they are doing and a sense of their competitors and supporters…. Practitioners of such techniques find themselves in a cocoon of self-confidence that Chambliss calls the ‘mundanity of excellence’, a cool attitude that opponents mystify to their own detriment. Small marginal differences in performance become magnified as winners become further energized, while losers become de-energized…. The emotional energy of the intellectual elite is continuously being rebuilt by a positive spiral… (Collins 2008, p. 456–457).
- 10.
The 28 delegates invited to participate were asked to contribute to a conversation. The invitation appealed to me as an opportunity to address the challenge of reframing national citizenship as global citizenship to address social and environmental challenges within regional biospheres. One of the leaders of our group is sponsored by UNESCO to foster a regional biosphere approach. The conversational approach enables those working towards this agenda to pool their resources. The process of conversation required that we introduce ourselves within our subgroups. We met in a chamber named for a nun, ‘Rosalia’. The participants in our subgroup spanned a range of academic disciplines (besides our shared contribution to systems thinking or systemic praxis). The disciplines from which we originated included mathematics, engineering, horticulture, environmental studies, development studies sociology, anthropology and fine art. The age of the participants ranged from 60s to 30s and spanned Iranian, Australian, English, American, Austrian and South African, South American and Japanese cultural heritages. Of the 28 delegates, only six were women, which is indicative of the way in which formal systems science is perceived. Nevertheless, a wide range of fields, including women’s studies and sociology/cultural studies and disciplines concerned about knowledge management and social justice, has contributed greatly to a systemic approach. Children’s issues were represented, and it would be worthwhile to ensure diversity in conversations about future generations.
- 11.
It is the context and the meanings we construct that make us who we are. This is our personality. Life is a continuum from inorganic matter to organic matter. Consciousness is also part of that continuum, according to Greenfield (2000, p. 21–22): ‘you cannot understand consciousness without understanding emotion, and that consciousness is not purely rational or cognitive as some, particularly those working in artificial, computational systems, have implied…the more we are feeling emotional, the less we are accessing our individual minds, the less we are being ourselves; ultimately we have let ourselves go…’
- 12.
De Grasse explains that we need to see horizons as always changing. The limits are beyond us and always relative. We do not know how big the universe is. In fact, it may be expanding. Parts of it may be contracting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 9RExQFZzHXQ&feature=related.
- 13.
We are human animals and have both rights and responsibility to the voiceless as caretakers and advocates. The emphasis on anthropocentrism could be said to be killing us, because we cannot see that in modifying the food chain, using pesticides widely has affected the bee population (Mathews 2010) which affects food production and killing top predators leads to the proliferation of other species that can place pressure on the ecology which leads to further degradation of the land on which we depend for food. This is arguably unravelling the fabric of the planet. Just as the telescope helped us to see in the distance and the microscope helped us see in detail that which was beyond our comprehension with the naked eye—the use of external digital software could enable us to hold in mind many variables and to find agreed pathways towards a sustainable future. According to De Grasse, it is thought that the universe is 14 billion light years. The light from 15 billion years ago has not yet reached us. We are unaware of it. We do not know if the entire universe is finite or not. This is just one example of our lack of understanding—limited to our intelligence at the moment. Human beings cannot fly and they cannot smell as well as many animals. But the microscope has helped them to see in depth and the telescope has extended their vision. But this is not enough. We all evolved on the plains of Africa to escape lions. Brains were shaped by natural selection. Those who collaborated and competed survived. The ability to think in terms of the big picture and the long term and to support those beyond our immediate family needs to be developed. We need to understand that the zero-sum—or ‘us them’ is not the answer to survival. Meat is no longer killed and shared just with the immediate kin and those with whom we want an alliance. Now we may need to think in terms of how to support large numbers of people in cities. According to De Grasse, as we develop tools, so we evolve to the next level.
- 14.
See for an example of working with stakeholders within one space at a particular time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_Hoxne_Hoard_at_the_British_Museum.ogv.
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McIntyre-Mills, J. (2014). Extending Our Horizons. In: Systemic Ethics and Non-Anthropocentric Stewardship. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07656-0_4
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