Shaping the Future: my new book

The world is disordered. Wars, again, in Europe and the Middle East, with civil wars continuing in many countries. The global climate has changed too: floods, droughts, and heatwaves are disrupting lives everywhere. Many are feeling helpless with forces beyond their control. Yet, some ask, “What can I do to make the world a better place?” They seek others who also want to make positive change happen so that, together, We can make it happen.

I am glad to announce that my new book, Shaping the Future: How to Be, Think, and Act in the New World (A Systems Guide for Leaders) will be available from October 24th on Amazon. It explains the three disciplines of Systems Being, Systems Thinking, and Systems Acting which are required for leaders at all levels to save the Planet and People everywhere.?

Albert Einstein said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we caused them.” We must lift our thinking to another level. The theories-in-use inside our heads driving our actions must change. Institutions we have created at the international, national, and local levels too, must be reformed with a new architecture to foster cooperation across their boundaries, not competition. ?

Even Einstein’s paradigm of science must change. He quantified space and time to make a mathematically computable model of the world. “God does not play dice”, he said. His model had no place in it for the human spirit, and human aspirations and egos. Technology is not an autonomous force. It is guided and used by human beings. 21st century technologies of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology are more powerful even than nuclear technology, which Einstein supported and then lamented was applied for the wrong purposes at the end of the Second World War. We must take charge of the institutions and technologies we create, or they will destroy us. ??

Here are some extracts from the book. I hope you may read it more fully.

From Chapter 1—Warnings Not Heeded

“Machines are designed to make their components function harmoniously. A modern automobile is composed of thousands of parts and many systems—energy conversion systems, propulsion systems, electronic systems, hydraulic systems, mechanical systems, etc. Engineers design the entire system and all its components.

Nature also has a design that enables all its parts to function harmoniously. In fact, natural systems are more complex than automobiles. Environmental scientists, botanists, zoologists, and other natural scientists are still trying to figure out how the whole system works together.

Societies and political systems, too, have designs, which enable diverse forces within them to hold society and its economy together. The difference between engineered systems, like automobiles, and socio-political systems is the relationship between designers and their creations. In engineered systems, the designer is outside the system he designs. He designs the machine; the machine does not design him. In social and political systems, the designer is within the machine. His ways of being and thinking are created by the same “machine” that he wants to redesign.

While engineers have laboratories to test their new designs in “safe-failing” spaces before they release their creations for wider use, social system changers have to create their new designs and test them in real life. Their experiments can blow up the world they live in, and themselves with it, if their experiments fail.

Design thinking can teach engineers how to design a complex aeroplane with many systems in it. Design thinking does not prepare an engineer to transform an aeroplane in which he is flying. He may bring everyone down in a crash, and himself, too, if his experiment fails.

Ecosystem leaders need a different perspective on systems than design thinkers because they have a symbiotic relationship with the system they want to improve. They are within the system they want to change; their ways of thinking are formed by it.”

From Chapter 10—Systems on the Edge

“The norms of a society cannot be changed merely by changing some formal organizations within them. More deeply embedded unwritten rules, which have evolved along with the histories of societies, must be changed. Those norms and rules give social systems stability and their identity. They cannot be changed by formal institutions of parliaments and courts. They are changed by much wider movements of citizens who aspire to change the ways in which their societies are functioning.

Movements of social change are propelled by aligned aspirations, not by written constitutions. Change comes first, and the constitution afterwards. A written constitution may be a sufficient expression of the aligned aspirations of a nation at one moment in its history. All citizens were not granted equal rights in the US Constitution in 1787: women and coloured people obtained these rights later, and people of various genders have begun to be treated equally only in this century. These new rights, not explicitly mentioned in the US Constitution, have emerged from an ongoing civilizational debate peppered with struggles—some peaceful, some violent.

Conceptions of “freedom”, “liberty”, and “human rights” are not cast in stone. They are always works in progress. Abraham Lincoln said, in 1864, “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word, we do not mean the same thing.” Written constitutions, which courts must follow, state what the will of the people was at some prior time in history. The will of the people changes as ideas of human rights and liberties evolve. Therefore, good democratic governance requires a robust process for those who govern the people to continuously listen to the people. Because people, not courts, shape the norms—the “unwritten rules”—of their societies.”

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