21. Understanding God and the Universe

The first twenty articles covering Dr. Ackoff’s 1993 presentation, which gives the best explanation I’ve ever heard for how we got to where we are today, can be summarized by:

The source of all the flaws from the Renaissance Age to our current Age are due to our inability to understand/define God and the universe.

I’ve already shared that six years later, Dr. Ackoff’s private presentation to General Motors in 1999 spent the most time and detail on this issue. In fact, it took me twelve articles to cover Dr. Ackoff’s 1993 presentation. This crucial section of the 1999 presentation used one illustration to cover 2/3 of the 1993 presentation! (Basically, everything I shared in articles #3 through #11, with the exception of article #8). Let’s look more closely at this crucial section of the 1999 presentation.

Dr. Ackoff illustrated all of this information with a spectrum that went from “Science” to “God”. “Corporation” was in the center of the spectrum.

On the “Science” end, he recognized this as analysis because he said science tries to understand by taking things apart into its elemental pieces. However, Dr. Ackoff showed that analysis only results in knowledge, while understanding only comes from synthesis, which on this spectrum is represented by moving towards the “God” end.

A great example is how Dr. Ackoff initially tried to improve the corporation. He didn’t try to take it apart with analysis. Instead, he used synthesis and looked to the next bigger system: Education.

So much of Dr. Ackoff’s work centered around education, not because he was passionate about education, in and of itself, but because of its effect on the corporation. This is why he spent so much time talking about how public education destroys the creativity of the individual, teaches people to do nothing so as to avoid making an error of commission, reinforces that being taught is the best way to learn rather than teaching, etc. because these were the problems in the corporation!

I can tell you that by 2003, he had given up on the public education sector to the point when he was asked what it would take to improve education he answered: “Revolution”. Instead, he realized that in order to improve education, he would have to improve the next bigger system…but that would require him to improve the next bigger system, etc.

The power in this ENTIRE series that I’m doing is that Dr. Ackoff came to the following conclusion that ought to have been obvious from the beginning:

The ONLY way to improve ANYTHING is to begin at the BIGGEST system and work backwards!

While the 1993 presentation uses “God” and “universe” interchangeably, by 1999 he was using “God” as the BIGGEST system and his rationale was: God created the universe. Notice, ANYONE who thinks that we are going to understand the meaning of life and our existence by analyzing the universe is demonstrating Renaissance Age thinking. Yes, there are a lot of things that can be learned from exploring outer space, however, whenever someone includes understanding the meaning of life and our existence as an answer, they are PROVING their thinking is 500 years behind the times!

FACT: Causality PROVES the universe was created by a First Cause.

FACT: All the flaws in our thinking from the Renaissance Age to our current Age are due to our inability to understand/define this First Cause.

THEREFORE: A person who cannot logically discuss the definition of the First Cause is unable to help us repair the flaws in our thinking.

Dr. Ackoff LOVED to recite this quote from Einstein: “You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it”. Dr. Ackoff’s version of this quote was closer to: “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking as what was used to create it.”

People who cannot talk about God at all AND people who cannot talk about God without getting emotional (religious) are not only not helping us repair our thinking, they are HINDERING our ability to repair the main issues the world faces…which means, they are facilitating the world getting worse!

The way I met my mentor was I was introduced by a person who overheard a conversation I was having with a new acquaintance. I asked the new acquaintance, “Do you know what Dr. Ackoff spent the last fourteen years of his life searching for? Do you know what he was trying to model?”

It was at that point, we were interrupted by a person saying in a derisive voice, “Yeah…God!”

Before the new acquaintance could try to ignore the answer, I jumped in and said, “Yes! That’s it! Dr. Ackoff believed the person who could model God could Dissolve ANY problem in ANY discipline!”

I believe Dr. Ackoff was so passionate about this approach because he intuitively knew that synthesis systems thinking could give the answer he was looking for.?

I instantly saw this when Jason Schulist shared the notes to Dr. Ackoff’s 1999 General Motors talk and it caused me to understand why I was able to determine the only non-contradictory model for the mind and brain…

…I was the only person in the world who had modeled God.

Link to Next Article: 22. Heretic

Link to Table of Contents:The Decline and Fall of the Machine Age