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Stratified World

"My starting point is as follows: With the world becoming ever more susceptible to shocks, the global risk landscape is now dominated by sharp discontinuities. Our world is changing everywhere, radically, very fast and in multiple intersecting ways that lend themselves to constant surprises. There is now no place to hide from the turbulence, the challenges and the uncertainties. Metaphors perhaps best describe how all this might feel: like driving at 100 kilometres an hour into fog without being able to ﬁnd the brakes, or like a sailing dinghy tossed around by the waves that could tip at any moment to one side or another with equal facility. The world has become a conveyor belt delivering constant surprises." - Thierry Malleret in A World in Disequilibrium?

My comments on the quote (I've linked the Author's Complete Essay here:http://flow.ph/stratified/Disequilibrium.pdf) are:

NOT REALLY!

It really is important that people see a stratified world...as an elephant. Dr. Don Beck came out with this idea of stratified democracy about a decade ago and the graphic is really key...

http://flow.ph/stratified for a look

The main thing I want you to see are that there are"worlds", waves, and corresponding oscillations demonstrating what I mean by using graphic metaphorically:

s is

This is a depiction of ocean activity, notice on the top there are a lot of shorter waves or oscillations but as you go down, the oscillations become farther apart and deeper...this is very important to notice...making the world at these levels look a lot differently, having differing characteristics and requirements.

The author of this quote above is largely talking about the surface oscillations and not these deeper oscillations which will occur over longer periods of time.

I take you back to the elephant and the blind monks.

If you see from your perspective, the waves at the surface, then yes, the author is largely correct, as these smaller waves respond to the deeper more profound changes that are under the surface, or at a different level.

These "levels" of reasoning are something that I discuss in my year-long 2013 guidance system for leaders. [www.f-l-o-w.com/2013]

Helpful Hint: IT becomes critical to notice each level, the noise it is making--realizing it is real at that level--yet, the deeper, more profound signal underlying each level makes up the noise in our reasoning. If you follow these oscillations, the author is write, it is extreme disequilibrium, but yet the underlying system is seeking to equlibriate by using the oscillations to change the surface, and will continue to do so, rocking the boats of all of those who are riding these waves...and insist on doing so.

Action Step:
MANY have no choice, and this is where it gets real tricky at the action stage. Here's why it's necessary to have reasoning that is larger and more complex, to be able to get past the surface oscillations, to take corrective action by learning what is causing the oscillations at the surface and to look at deeper cause and effect.

Disclaimer: While we can experience deeper, more profound levels of reasoning at times, few can grasp these levels and generate from them, and even those people have limits in their process. It's important to stave off the need to peddle faster and faster, a la red queen and alice...but to recurse your view back to periods of time into deeper structures, actually "reversing, or decelerating" the oscillation at some levels, which means in order to go fast, one must slow down...and look at larger and larger systems. There is a point at which we can't keep up any longer with this gambit--none of us--as it's foolhardy to continue to create larger problems which require larger and larger intervention.
At some point: knowing when to hold'em and knowing when to fold'em, makes sense when it comes to riding waves of complexity.

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