Adaptive Behavior (journal)

Transcription

Ladies and gentleman welcome back to the seminar. Our keynote speaker today Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He's a world-leading systems thinker who among his many accomplishments has developed the notion of a learning organization. In 1997 Harvard Business Review identified Peter Senge's book the Fifth Discipline as one of the seminal management books all the previous seventy five years. For this work he was named by Journal of Business Strategy as the strategist of the Century. Please give a warm welcome to Peter Senge. So first off let me say it's a great honor to be here as a part in the celebration. What you all have done in building this center is really very inspiring to us around the world. Thank you. Uhm, it's also a lot of fun for me to be here in Finland. I don't get here very often. I have many really great friends and colleagues. Finnish colleagues. Who I tend to see all around the world. But occasionally I see them here in Finland. So it's always a special treat to be here with them, here in Finland. Particularly all my friends in team Academy who I seem to bump into everywhere. Most recently was in Bhutan and China, a week apart. So, I think maybe what I'll do for a few minutes is just reflect a little bit personally. Because it's interesting of course listening to the way, in particular, Raimo's summary of the journey of building the laboratory. A very easy for me to identify. Not just with the lab, is that probably only known you Raimo and Esa for fifteen years or so. So, it hasn't been 30 years but certainly has been a journey of that sort for me personally. So I could help but also just kinda connect that with my own personal background. So just let me say a few words about that, and then Raimo suggested it would be a very diverse audience. I should probably say a little bit about kind of the work we've been doing for a long time basics. So that we all our more less starting from the same point, and then we'll see we go from there. I was always drawn to this field of understanding systems even before I probably had a good word for it. Just to my youth I became very aware of, with least as I recall, best I can recall. You know. memory is by its nature retroactive, but this retrospective. Well as best I can recall, I probably even had the word systems. But, the part that I can recall very clearly, I grew up in Los Angeles. And the most powerful experience beside all the time outdoors playing baseball and with all my friends. The most vivid experience I had over a period of about thirteen or fourteen years is watching paradise disappear. When I was a young child growing up in Los Angeles, I can remember sitting in the back seat my mother and father's car driving for hours and hours. And all we would see is lemon groves an orange groves. It's kinda hard to imagine this today because of course they're all completely gone. Disappeared within about 10 years. Woosh! Shopping malls and housing developments had replaced all the orange groves lemon drops. And it's kinda hard to imagine today. I'm sure many of you visit Los Angeles. You certainly see it represented in countless films and television shows. It really was paradise. It was an incredibly beautiful place. The weather was perfect, the air was clear, there were trees, palm trees, and the orange and lemon groves everywhere. And it was amazing how rapidly that occurred in probably no coincidence that was kinda synchronous with my own youth. So at the early stages of my youth I can remember that vividly in by time it was time to go off to college. We have many days when we would be warned by the city government that children should not go outside because the air pollution was dangerous. And the place I grew up to was surrounded by mountains. But by a time it was time to go to college. You only saw the mountains a few days every month. So that happened very quickly and it made me very aware of something at dynamic which I would say is probably the dynamic in some ways that unfolds around the world. But of course because it unfolds around the world, we don't experience it around the world, we experience it in localities. I spend a about a month a year in china for the last almost fifteen years now. And of course what I live through in Los Angeles people in China live through very quickly. All of a sudden, boom! The air is unsafe, you can't really see anything and the forests are gone. And in place of them are buildings and roads and lots of cars. I think I was probably about 17 or 18 years old. I could have this recollection of a conversation with my mother. And of course, again, all this is a hindsight. Well, but I think it's relatively accurate. Why I said something like, well seems leaders have one problem in the world and all the problems in the world rise out of this one problem. And, as I understood it then, the problem was interdependence. That interdependence is life. I often think it's important for us in this system's field just to remember that systems is just a word. It's become the mainstream scientific word, where you might say systems and complexity. The kind of two mainstream scientific words the say something which people have understood as long as people have understood anything. We do not live alone, we have never lived alone. We live in a world of extraordinary interdependence. This is a sensibility which defines in many ways native awareness. By native, I mean before the industrial revolution. Of course for me before the agricultural revolution. There is many people who have reflected on the evolution of culture, who would probably say that was the first fundamental break. In many ways defined and of course is embodied in almost all over Axial Age religions. Not all but most of them. Sometimes very explicit because those religions had their roots in a time period very similar to the beginnings of organized agriculture during which time human beings go through this profound shift. There was no word from nature. Most native communities have no word for nature. You do not need a word for something that is you. They all have words for Mother Earth. They all have ways of talking about the human in the sky, Mother Earth, Father Heaven. Well actual words like that show up in native cultures everywhere. But the word nature is an abstraction, very familiar to us. Because we live in a distraction because somewhere during that journey in some places in the world. Probably as long as for five thousand years ago, probably a little more recently, but in many places in the world literally in the last few hundred years, all the sudden the human nature are two separate things. So while I know I didn't say it that way when I was 17 years old. What I did say was something like: It's very clear to me that we've built this extraordinary web of interdependence. They might say it's a web layered on top of the web life, its interdependence. There is no such thing as living separate. That we inherit that all species inherit. But on top of that web have we build a second web because for sure this is as far as any of us know the first time in human history where simple daily acts are every way everyday ways of living. Very mundane things like we plug it into the wall. Right, very few of us think of this as an unethical action, charging our device, whatever that device might be. But of course that device uses electricity. That electricity has to come from someplace. It does not actually come from the sock law. Right, it comes from a an electronic grid, a grid that that moves electricity all over this part of the world. My guess is here most of it comes from fossil fuels imported probably from Russia. In my country about seventy percent of electricity comes from burning coal. Now it is shuttering people. We get caught up. We're kind of I would say dazzled might be a good word by our technology. We have to realize none of it works, not of it works, if we don't plug it into the wall and burn former living things. So next time we think we're so sophisticated we should remember we burn shit to make the device work. That's how it works, but of course we don't see that system because that is a system we layered on top of the innate system that defines living, so systems on top of systems. And what I was most aware of having that experience as a child growing up and paradise lost, if I can reuse a old phrase, and was the total out of control nature of the process. Of this am quite certain, if you did brought together any group of people children like me, adults people and government people and business people in the middle of the development. Boom! Because of course all what happened in Los Angeles was driven ninety-nine percent by private development, the opportunity to exploit possibilities for building things and making money. But if you ask any of those people this is a a way of talking about. I know I didn't quite understand and I felt if you'd asked salespeople "do you wanna destroy the orange groves and lemon drops you want to destroy the possibility for children playing outside do you want to destroy the possibility that children can walk to school by themselves you wanna destroy the air" of course they would have all said no. How many of us want to destroy species? Really you look up in the morning I what a beautiful day to destabilize the climate a bit more. Of course we don't think that way. No one wants to produce the systemic outcomes that we consistently produce. And when I staredt to realize that is almost a kind of to me the archetypal definition a systems intelligence, or let's just say systems ignorance. One of the faces that paraded along during Raimo presentation was a very very dear friend, Donella Meadows. Dana and I were very close. She died way too young. And Dana was one of the most articulate writers in my experience, in the systems world. At least in the US the only environmental writer I know whoever was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. When she wrote beautiful, she kinda wrote as she talked. Those of you who aspire to write just remember it's really simple, you can write as you talk. Your writing will be good then you talking will get better too. But most us of course, you learn to write in schools, we don't write as we talk, we write as we wrote for our seventh-grade teacher. o we could impress her or him by how much we knew. Unfortunately most academics never escape that trying to impress somebody about how much they know. To another subject Dana a was a farmer. She lived on a farm in New Hampshire, a communal farm. A lot of colleagues many of whom were working on the same issues, many who may be remembered in Elementos as the co author the limits to growth for books that Raimo put up. And showed a couple of the simulation curves and pointing out that you know is all very crazy and radical to most people fifty years ago. It was published action 1972. So it's really only a little over forty years ago. I was at MIT when it was published. I was a graduate student. I got to know all the people working on the project. Very good friends. But today of course we have all the sustainability issues, which is a relatively new kinda jargon term, not a very good term. I think it's played a useful function because I too have been part of using this term is played a useful function because it is at least corrected. One profound air we were all making for a long time with was it separate the social and environmental. So of course we have a lot of environmental activists. We have many organizations have grown up around the world to current draw attention to the imbalances we create in the environment and then we tend to have separate organizations they're drawing attention to the plight of the poor and social inequity. This has been a big year because the two are not separate. Poor people always suffer most when there's environmental stress and people who are really trying to figure out how they're going to live and if they have any reasonable food for the next few days cannot be good stewards of their natural resource even if they would really want to do so. So the fragmentation of social environmental issues it's been a big mistake and ironically a lot these same organizations compete for various kinds of philanthropy or government grants. Compete with each other you know can you give the money here to give the money here and they don't work together. They are in a word not very systemic in their practice even though they're trying to help the world. Understand a particular set of very systemic problems. So that too kinda identifies one of the key elements. It doesn't really help much to have a systems awareness up here. It all comes down to what we do, how we operate, how we think and act. So I eventually came to this very simple, I guess I would say I got, level you know here understanding overall these systems issues before I could really articulate them very well. But as I remember telling my mom I think there's this one problem it's the level of interdependence has grown extraordinarily in the world and we do not understand it. Design you very well as I said that nobody wanted to produce the consequences that development in Los Angeles have produced, nobody was trying to accomplish that, and yet that's exactly what was accomplished. You know quite a predictable you can say systematic manner. Inputs in, outputs outs. Very systematic, very predictable, and I guess that's why start understand why this system stuff is so important. The archetypal system for you and I human beings for most of us is the family. And when Raimo had his list of given types of systems. Of course that was up there because as human beings we grow up in families. If we just simply ponder. I don't mean to impose us self its makes sense just to ponder for a moment the suffering that you've seen firsthand produced and families and that's suffering can range from hurt feelings to miscommunication too many many forms. Of course we know very common abuse and ask yourself the question is it anybody's call to produce this suffering, is anybody try to hurt feelings or hurt people and yet we consistently produce those outcomes. Thats systems ignorance and the word is probably not the best word. I am only using it to juxtapose it to systems intelligence but it's probably a pretty technically accurate word. In the Confucian tradition it is considered a sin to be ignorant, not a sin like the Western you know original sin kind of sin, but really a fundamental air to ignore. That which you could if you worked at it be aware. So we live in a world of systems ignorance and that's an abstract way to say we live in a world where we consistently produce suffering for a each other, for other humans and for living creatures of all sorts which nobody intends. And I really don't need to say anything more than that to know why we're sitting in this room said it's not abstract it's not intellectual it's not a on argument taste and some happy theory of any sort it's simply a reflection on our experience if we really reflect our experience we can come to this conclusion. Now I'm obviously articulating a particular way, a way that is meaningful for me. Because it just my own life journey as I said. Kind of brought back to my awareness by listening to to history as a center here because there's many centers like this not a lot not nearly as many as there could should be but there's plenty of places world where people have come together whit some version of this awareness, some version that as a species as society's we are blocked. We have so little ability to be aware up the consequences our own actions and the real irony to put it in a kind as I classic that lemma form are interdependence has grown and our awareness of the interdependence has declined and that in a nutshell I would say is the more succinct way to express what I was feeling by the time I was ready to go to university. If you imagine those two curves, they have been diverging for a long time. Probably by and large they continue to diverge and they won't diverge forever because we're just two species were not particularly significant. Beyond that we're just another species and were actually very young species very very young in any kind of biological or evolutionary terms. And all species exist only in a niche. That is biology 101. A species in niche coexist, no species exists except in a niche. It's very interesting question maybe a very good question for us gathered here this morning. Let us ask us what is our niche. You can't answer that first just geographically obviously it has to be considered in terms of different types ecosystems but you think of it geographically. There's plenty of examples of human cultures surviving for thousands of years there's probably more examples of those that don't survive that long, societies that survive but in some case thousands of years. I know a lot of native cultures and United States have had a good fortune of having a lot of contact with a large native cultures. Of course you have native cultures here not far away for just a few hundred miles to the north. You'll find lots of people who live not too different than they lived five thousand years ago. The Blackfoot Indian say they've been there for about fifteen thousand years where they live today. That can be roughly true for quite a few of the older Native American cultures. The primary migratory pass and this is all on their own teachings we now have this confirmed genetically by tracing the movement of genoms around the planet. Their primary migrations started about 15 thousand years ago during the last ice age when there was a land bridge connecting what today's Russia and Alaska. Many apparently also migrate by boat but that was a primary migratory route and they've been there a long time. So there's not the problem that it's impossible for human beings to survive and trive in a niche. We have plenty of examples a all of which our local there in particular geographies and to me to put this same puzzle and basically on trying to do this kind of in many ways articulate a puzzle of what I would consider. Maybe our core dilemma. It appears that this species is kinda hell-bent on making the planet earth our niche. The next one very simple way for a biological perspective to articulate climate destabilization we are actually altering a very complex set of global systems with shape weather. So you could say well the trajectory of our economic, technological and population growth the church free of all three of those multiplied together now makes us an agent shaping life on the planet. In the conditions for life on the planet of course as I have been already saying. Mostly in a way they have complete unawareness. In fact you could say still a lot of people believe that this could be occurring and I would say it's not because they're crazy. This never occurred in history or so it's very natural when someone says well human beings are altering the global climate that people would naturally respond initially well that's impossible. Ther is you know just a few of us. I travel for miles in my country I don't see people and I know mostly earth is not human beings and sure our population is a lot bigger than it was 50 or 100 or 300 years ago. But still how can we be altering the planet's climate. But we seem to be doing it. While I was in China recently about a month ago the World Wildlife published up its annual state a planet report which in was covered in the newspapers in China. China by the way, there is a tremendous amount of environmental activism in China, but we don't tend to see that from far away but when you're close you see it. So this was a covered quite extensively in China as the state of the planet report the World Wildlife fund the WWF, you all of course know them. probably the best-known environmental organization in world that in the last years we've lost 50 percent of the wildlife species in last 30 years. Again who's trying to make that happen the short answer courses you and me we, the big we. So to just kinda keep that one frame at a puzzle since all organisms existed in niche the obvious question for any organism if you consider its change its growth this as humans as this particular species has a what's our niche. Which the leads to a very interesting question if our niche is to be the planet what's the consciousness that that will require. Because probably given the particularities of this species we cannot exist in any niche without some way of thinking believing, some ethos. Some sort of ideas, some sort of overarching whatt thinking and talking that enable us.Since language is so important in how this particular species functions. Not unique to us of course, but very important how the species functions that will have to have a way of thinking and talking. It allows us to exist in which if you spend time with a the native peoples who have existed in some geographic niche for many thousands of years you merely discover that they have ways of talking they always are being they have ceremony they have sculptural praxis which helps them continually reflect on this awareness, for example, the Blackfeet, the Blackfoot indians have no nouns. Theirs is a language with no nouns by the way that's the way David Bohm got the idea for the real mode. It was proposed to him by a man named Leroy the Little Bear an elder of the Black Feet was pointing out this is a little conversation Esa and others and I have been having. David of course, a very famous physicist. Some of you may have heard of him, who just had come to he point where he was convinced to while the mathematics of quantum theory were terribly compelling very very very very maybe zero physicists experienced quantum theory. They knew it here they, knew it in their mathematics, they did not know it here in here, and if we don't know something here here we really don't know it, and he had come to the conclusion that we should reinvent a language and was inspired by this here the what if you get a language with no nouns. Of course nouns are wonderful way of reinforcing a certain confusion. Right, we see things, nouns give us a perception in a linguistically a reinforcing a perception of definiteness. This is the way it is, this is a seat this is a person, these shoes right literature courses accurate speed proximate maybe useful but it's not the truth there's nothing in the physical world that ever stays put the stays in one form. Form is a continuous process, a flux, you might find interesting to know that was the most a common phrase it's the Blackfeet like to use this is way of articulating life they've talk have surfing the flux, surfing the flux. They cannot describe things, they can only describe processess. Now that is a certain linguistic evolution that has helped them remain harmonious with their geographic niche for fifteen thousand years so it's not that human beings cannot do this. We know plenty of examples were human beings do this. We just don't know a lot and most them a bit more or less erraticated over the past 100 to 200 years. This global industrialization process has not only destroyed species but cultures. Again the irony at the very time when we're starting to appreciate a little bit of what we need to know the sensibility of people who have existed for thousands of years were busy doing everything we can to destroy those people. Mary Catherine Bateson is a woman I met through Dana, very interesting woman, anthropologist. Her father is a man named Gregory Bateson. Many of you may know in the history of systems her mother was a woman named Margaret Mead I'm sure many of you know also a famous anthropologists. Mary Catherine and I we're traveling around South Africa together for about two weeks about just a little before apartheid it that's it is around 1988 or 89. You never forget she says whenever they say this before it really touched me she said I have the same passion for the conservation of cultural diversity that a biologist will have for the passion a conservation have species diversity. Nature produces a ride for those of us every one of us in this room to a high degree probably very very high degree who've grown up in the industrial age which is the age we live in now, it is not over. That is a terrible error to say that the information age replace the industrial age, hardly, the information age is the industrial age. there is a whole industrial age, it has been punctuated by radical ships and other technology it is the Industrial age. In the industrial age this linguistic consciousness so focusing on things becomes augmented accelerated deepened spread more widely by a fascination with devices. Or as Lewis Mumford wrote many many years ago what I think he rightly called the industrial age, the machine age and I couldn't help but think as I was kinda reflecting on the journey on the system's field again as rhyme always what's up what's what's summarizing it that's so much in that language so much the applications not all but so much was really to the effective organization sheets an effective machine thinking for the organization he would work. I remember my professors in operations research and I know that they were really a need for people like this when I was an undergraduate at Stanford before I came to MIT as a graduate student ibut there was nothing in them than ever touched me as how I could better understand what it meant to be alive. Most the system's field is an outgrowth that have many different branches of engineering. I too am trained as an engineer. My mentors, most them came out of that tradition. I think it's wonderful tradition I think it's provided many schools for understanding interdependence feedback dynamics and even cases when you're serious about a complex nonlinear feedback dynamics which start to give you a little feeling for life. But it is very clear to me at this point in time that our survival in all likelihood literally depends not understanding complex systems. Which the very word of course for 95 percent probably Finnish people I certainly would say it's 98 percent of Americans. the very words system sounds like machine. Hey we have a systems problem around here, we need to get asystems expert. We all know what that typically means our computers aren't working correctly of course the other most common use the word system is hey it's not my fault it's the stupid ever heard a brand companies say this so neither which is what we're talking about here. A simpler word for here would simply be life, which is by its nature systemic interdependent interconnected continually unfolding continually in a state of flux. So partly what I'm trying to do that kinda reflect with you on what was evoked as I was sitting missing this morning obviously to sharing my own personal journey a bit, that the kinda key questions if gradually Chris lies from me and again I'm just saying this so I can share with you my own way of looking at this on how do we start to close the gap between independent we create and the interdependence we understand. And there will be be kind of simple, kind of technical way of saying it. How do we understand the ways of thinking and being that will be required, if in fact the earth the planet itself is to be our niche. There'll be a slightly different way of saying because by the way if that doesn't happen since we do know I think this is a pretty good first principle I mean it's all just ideas well send it right. For me it's a pretty good first principle that all species only surviving in the niche. So therefore that's a good way to phrase it. And if the answer to that question is we won't develop the way somebody, the awareness the ways of thinking talking acting consistent with surviving in the niche called planet Earth, we won't survive that niche period. We will end up maybe in a whole cluster of small, a lot more local niches. That's probably not a future that any of us would desire. Since probably it will only come about in concert was some sort a larger collapse. But there's a a third way to express the same question. As you can tell I guess that I was fortunate enough, I didn't really have Esa Saarinen as a professor when I was a student but i did have some very very good philosophy professors while was busy being a a major in systems engineering I was being a minor in philosophy. Hence all these problems that still exist. I heard this question articulated in a little different way about a three or four months ago as I was listening I was thinking of this story. This is a not a technical way or even a rational succinct way but its a very meaningful way for me. Because when I live through this little experience I thought yes. So what are the areas that we've worked in for a lot last 10 years are fisheries. Again Raimo's summar,y one of the the archetypal understandings that has pervaded a lot of the field of understanding human and ecological or environmental interfaces. It is the Tragedy of the Commons. I imagine many of you have heard of that, Raimo included in his summary, in fisheries are a perfect example. Seventy-five eighty percent of the world's wild fisheries are either collapsed or near collapse. The most of the rest are on that path, but not all. In the last decade fifteen years there's actually quite a few remarkable success stories of the restoration of fisheries. Not nearly enough. But again it's not like we can't do this. It's very important just as I was pointing out about humans cultures and societies that have lived in harmony with their natural environment for long periods of time. We cannot make the statement that human beings do not know how to do this. It's just we're not doing it. So there's a quite a few wonderful success stories of restoration of fisheries. Generally the claims made by the Environmental Defense Fund is the NGO in the US thats been most active in this and and they would say that today if you take the Pacific Coast North America north of Mexico so then you've got California Oregon a Washington state a British Columbia and up to Alaska. You take that whole slot of about for five thousand miles of coastline. About eighty percent of the fisheries are now managed. They have some sort of quota system pair up because the species will have protected areas We know this area is crucial for the breeding and reproduction that species. So they will have no fishing areas still have management quotas of different sort. So people can only catch so much. And guess who is the key to making this happen just factually? Almost anybody who has been involved in this work, any of the scientists you ask, how have the success stories occurred who do you think there's a absolute critical actor in the success stories? What would you guess? This is a little systems intelligence our systems intuition test, we will call it. The site is so important for sure because you've got to have good ongoing process of tracking the population. What they did to be called the census, a common term today is a packs total allowable catch. So that has to be a scientifically based number we know during this seat, during this year here's the total amount that can be caught to not further deplete the population and help in this process a restoration. So the site is so important but they're not who I was referring to the scientists are trying to do this in every fish around the world and there is only a relatively small number that have have really started this regenerative process. The local fishermen. In every single case it is the leadership for the fishing communities themselves or as the people work in this area called the fishers. There is a leadership of the fishers themselves that actually is crucial. So we've been getting involved in that, we being a lot of us interconnected systems folks, in many ways goes right back to the inspirational people like Dana Meadows years ago. Because it's actually I think an area were all of us can learn a lot. In many situations we have severely depleted ecological conditions, the restoration process will take centuries but oftentimes marin ecosystems are relatively resilient if they're not pushed too far. Fish populations, of course varies by species, breed relatively fast if you're dealing with prawns or various of mollusks. They could actually generate literally in two to three years. So it's a great place to learn, its one of the reason we got very involved. And I believe in just as much strategic standpoint in my own personal view in as a systems person how is the single most important thing to do was find the places where people are doing it well. Where this I would say innate systems intelligence which we are all born with and I return to before we wrap up, because I think it's may be the single most important insight. I think now we have a lot of evidence of this innate systems intelligence, really is being brought into play on a scale in a setting around issues that we all care a lot about so we spent a lot time trying to understand work with the people in this restoration process. So in that context, I was in the La Pos Mexico. If you could picture Baja California on I grew up in Alto. That's what they were called, where I grew up. In America we call it California but to the Mexican it is Alto California. Baja California is the long a three four hundred a thousand-mile Peninsula that extends down and in the very tip of it is La Pas, with the very very historically rich clams fishery and the the Sea of Cortez the big body of water between Baja California and the mainland of Mexico is the source about eighty percent up the marine life productive life of the country Mexico. So the whole area is very important and there is a lot of efforts for fishery restoration throughout but is very difficult. Because unlike Alto, my California when growing up and United States and British Columbia the places where this restorations occurred you do not have rule of law that is very reliable as many you know I'm sure. The country of Mexico is in a state of chaos and disintegration because the drug trade because of course there is demand for drugs in the country I live in. That's made it very difficult for the marine biologist in the fishing communities to do this, but we were there and there actually in the last few years something quite remarkable has happened in the claim fishery of Baja California as I say. I'm always kinda drawn to where's it happening, how do we understand that. And in this little conversation I think I saw something which I never really seen as clearly as I saw it. This was about, I think this was in May of this year's. So quite recent. So we're sitting in a circle kind of typical systems practice we've gravitated to over the years, not a new practice by the way. Every native people ever spending time with have that as their core government system, the circle. So we are sitting in a circle and a some of the members of th so called NOS, No Estes Sustainabilidad that's the NGO that is based in the La Pas. Mostly marine biologists who because they understood it will come to the fishing communities they located their office in the middle the fishing community and for many years they have been building different quality of relationships. Scientists often don't build good relationships with a fishers. This is important for all of us, because most of us in this room have this common liability we've been way way over-educated, right. Many of us have been in school pretty much our whole life and now you're sitting with people who may, very a few whom ever completed secondary education. No one that I know of in the leadership of that fishing community are university graduate any then you have these scientists who get kind of parachuted with all their PhD's and they're gonna help the fishing community restore their fish. You the sense of the problem right away. The very first thing NOS, No Estes Sustainabilidad, which is abbreviated NOS, which in Spanish is also we. So that's what they call themselves. NOS. The very first thing NOS did is they located their office in an old run-down building in the middle of the fishing community. They kind of refurbished it little. It is not fancy but it works. The next thing they did is they realized the children, like all communities, their first concern is always for their children. The children guess what they're Mexicanos they love football they would play soccer all day long if they could. So they built a soccer field for the kids. The kids had no place to play soccer so they build a soccer field. Marine biologists educated all these universities. Their first intervention in the community is to build a football field. It's just a dirt field, but before that the kids from the fishing community had no place to play football. And of course when the kids play football the parents come around a watch, cheering. They get excited again, they're Mexicans. They get very excited. and the football team is quite good the kids are actually very talented and they had some reasonable good coaches. So their first revitalization strategy for the fishery was a soccer field. The second strategy thus they start working in a year or so was organic farming. I tell you this story in a little detail because I don't know about you but I get lost in all the abstractions about systems intelligence, but when I can see it and feel it it starts to sink in. The second strategy was organic farming. The practical aspect this is very simple to restore fish one of the first things is you almost always have to stop fishing. Where would food come from. Well all of a sudden the whole community which is called el Mangle. The whole community would be getting into organic gardening. Say within two years they're producing a lot a really nice vegetables and they're very proud of them and of course they are cleaning up things. So they have a more orderly physical arranges they can grow their food and meantime they're not fishing at all because as they're kinda building coherence and commitment in the community the kids, the gardening the markets they create for their food and of course employment opportunities for many the people are very important during this process so they are working on job creation and some enterprise development micro finance and all those kind of things you know are a part a of a early stage development in very poor countries. Their claim fishery is starting to rebound and again this is a species they can regenerate quite quickly so they had a census. I think this was about March or April where local clam fishery was up to about three million clams. And it was basically zero or near zero two years ago. So we're sitting in the circle reflecting on this process and by way they're still not harvesting they want the population to get back and the scientists and fish the fishers to agree to about four to five million before they can start reasonable harvesting. So we're sitting around the circle reflecting on this extraordinary journey. With members of NOS. Several of us visitors who are there trying to help support real systemic change in settings like this and many of us know each other. We've worked here now for about five years and several of the fisheries has joined us. And I'll never forget this story. This is my long preamble to get to this full story told by Armand who I found out later had actually been arrested for illegal fishing in jail that doesn't happen much but does happen ocassionally. Its what's supposed to happen. The government's been trying to shut down this fishery for years the government can't do it. THe only people who can do it is the fishing community themselves. Because they are the only ones who can enforce it. So Armand apparently had been arrested and jailed for some time because of illegal fishing. He had a reputation as a kind of a, you know a guy who would do what he need to do to make the money for his family. Which of courses is the basic issue for all these people. It's not like they're criminals but their whole history is fishing and they're gonna fish. And I have literally heard people in the setting say we are racing for the last fish. It will break your heart when you hear people say but then you realize the reality is such that they really don't see an option but to race for the last fish. So Armand is telling this story and the story is this he said when I was a child I always want to go with my dad fishing. But he would not take me, he said it is too dangerous I can't take you to the boat you are a little kid and then he said when I was about six or seven he said but if you get good grades in school for the next two years I'll take you fishing with me. So I worked really hard. I get really good grades in school and then about eight or nine years old my dad says you can come fishing with this morning. Now this is claim fishing so what they do is they dive. Okay so they dive they surface dive, they don't use any artificial air. They've been doing this for many generations so they can dive. The water is maybe no more than that 10 meters or so. I suspect seven to 10 meters deep. So he's in the boat with his dad. His dad dives off the side with his big bag to gather the clams. And Armand is sitting there and he saidis sitting there he is sitting there. And his dad doesn't come up and of course first he thinks well of course you know my dad he can dive for long time. His dad still doesn't come up. And he starts to panic. Should I jump in? I mean I can't save my father. He's not here. You now Armand says I had no idea how long this was. Of course for a eighty year old boy it felt like forever. Finally his dad pops up. Armand says I have no idea how long it was. It was at least hours for me. His dad comes up of the water with this huge smile on his face. And he says I only hope that someday you will see how beautiful it is. We have to rediscover our love for the natural world. Armand is now a famous leader of the restoration of this fishery. And what has allowed him to do that was that's what he told us that story and he took by the way about an hour to tell that story because he discovered something. That it will start with the emotional blow. We are systems thinkers by our nature. We are born, we are predisposed, we are biologically predisposed to love. Now in universities and economy we don't talk about this a lot for all kinds of reasons. The word gets very confused in our cultures. We don't really use the term you know Agape much anymore. You know when we had multiple terms to express different aspects in context of love. We had different words in our modern culture. Of course about Finnish I don't know clue about. Maybe you still have some of that. But still a a great teacher for me someone who I always love just kind of recognizing because this is beautiful opportunity for me to reflect and he's been the person is probably taught me as much about reflection as anyone. I've been taught by some wonderful wonderful teachers. He's a biologist and his name is Umberto Maturana. So you may have heard of him he's very famous in the system's world. M-A-T-U-R-A-N-A he was the teacher of a man named Francisco Farella. Francisco and he later became colleagues and co authors. Famous in biology for what's called the Santiago theory of cognition, the first biological theory. Roberto is an experimental biologist by training did his postdoc research in MIT with a man named Jerry Leptin very famous work on the the biology of perception how a frog sees fly very very famous work in biology. That was Umbertos graduate student than he returned to Chile and to Santiago through Chile of cognition is of course from Santiago de Chile. Where Umberto has lived throughout all the turmoil of the last forty years in Chile. He's revered by Chilenos because he stayed. Lot of the intellactuals fled in the Pinochet era he stayed. He says I I'm a Chilean and I belong here. So Umberto make some very interesting points. Umberto makes lots of interesting points but pertinent to the point I was just making with you that this is not cultural. We have a tendency to think that a lot of our ethical norms and lot of our understanding of relationships is based on our cultural systems. and of course that is true. Every child learns from her/his mother about relating to other people and a lot from her/his father so yes of course this is influenced by culture. Roberto has a very radical perspective as a biologist he said we are loving species. And he uses to illustrate this many many things but that's of course what was kind of flooding to my awareness as I listen to Armand's story. yYu all know this in evolutionary biology. Right the theory of the opposable thumb. Right we are the only species, we used to say that with the only species with this we know that's not actually accurate anymore the bonobo chimps also have opposable thumb. But it's a very significant distinction in our evolution which of course allows us to grab thinks. Take on the standard kind of evolutionary theory but the opposable thumb in the evolution of cognition awareness ways operating which is basically the jist of Umbertos Santiago theory of cognition. That is about structural coupling, about are harmony with our environment. Not our thought process but that you can come back to. Umberto says no this is not just for grasping we are not only the species that grasps we are the species that caresses. It is biological not just cultural. That's why Umberto this very eminent biologist says we are loving species. It's worth noting. When I heard Armand's story I realized, yep. And that's why we have innate systems intelligence they are two facets of the same thing. It is through our ability to extend our compassion, if I could use that term, very similar idea, our empathy, our apreciaton, our ability to feel what others feel, our ability to care, our ability to actually build a relationship based on mutual care. Those are all manifestations of the word were using here systems intelligence. We are loving species so third way to articulate my dilemma or puzzle I'm to share with you is that how do we fall in love once again with the world. Not just with one and another not just with those close enough to us but with our life with the world. In the last five to 10 years I spent most my time working in education and traveling a little tour around the world with my colleague from Denmark here doctor Metabul. Who's kind of helping to nit together remarkable innovators in education. And from this experience one of the things i've seen not from this last few months but over the last 10 years watching systems ideas and tools for understanding systems in the hands of three-year-olds four-year-olds five-year-olds you will be stunned to see that innate systems intelligence showing up. The best analogy I've been able to come to find for this imagine you know children were never given a musical instrument there would not be a lot of musicians in the world. Any of the tools and artifacts and processes to cultivate their innate systems intelligence but were born with musical intelligence the instrument allows us to cultivate or the joining together and singing in some sort of organized process of singing together allows us to cultivate it. We have none of that for systems intelligence, we have immense innate systems intelligence that is who we are we are loving systems intelligence species and the various gaps I was trying to characterize before will only be closed. I come to a conclusion, in my opinion, will only be closed if we discover that again.