My visions of a TO BE county social systems starts by imagining the county as a single living organism where each individual resident represents one cell within the body of this organism. Today, these cells are primarily independent and work on their own behalf, even though some spend much of their energy inside of grouping of cells identified as businesses or other organizations.
Metaphorically the TO BE condition of these single cells (residents) is similar to the period in time when single and multicellular entities become “frogs.” Using this metaphor, we can outline the major organs of our county “frog-like” organism establishing the core functions:
§ The Brain—Office of Integration
§ The Heart—An Education System
§ Circulatory System—Infrastructure that moves resources, data, information, people as they travel throughout the entire social system
§ Respiratory System—Input and Output monitoring of all resources and associated waste
The redesign will be based on the idea of Integral Education: body, mind and spirit in self, culture and nature. There are new models emerging that will help guide us through this process, with the intent to create an environment where peer cohorts, wisdom counsels, and leading authorities interact to exchange, debate and explore ideas, innovate solutions or learn basic life skills to help us all thrive. The premise is that everyone is a leader and as a leader we take responsibility for our world. For most of us, that means ourselves. Those whose world can include leading others, their job is to expand the worlds of others, without losing theirself.
Like a heart, our education hub beats the pulse of all those who pass through it, feeding all the vital organs in the system which in turn touch every other aspect of “the body.” Secondary schools, business, government, libraries, media centers will be in constant communication and exchange so that our education system meets the needs of our people. This is place all people touch and pass through on a regular basis. As members of this social system we live a principle of transferring knowledge to each other, demanding that special attention be given to providing and receiving education services continually on an individual level. This is not to say that transferring knowledge is done only in classroom settings. The redesign of education will support the spectrum of learning styles and learning environments across a broad range of subject matters, commensurate with the diversity of minds we have living around us.
Our ‘Heart Hub’ is built including an imperative for convenient access to the homes, restaurants, shopping and entertainment facilities. An extremely high level of functional, aesthetic and meaningful design will prevail, inspiring our body, mind and soul. This heart serves everything and when combined with the brain distributes intelligence across the entire system; utilizing an innate human capability to self-organize.
In our fragmented and silo structured communities, integrating the diverse interests, capabilities, needs and power bases is the first step toward designing a social system that includes the core value needs of it constituents. These social structures do not exist yet, so building one will feel much like walking across a bridge as it gets built.
The first job will be to train and staff the Office of Integration (IO) with the “right” people. These people will demonstrate a high degree of experienced based learning; quick processing of feedback; competence at recalibrating their state of being and associated actions; an ability to take independent initiative and work in a highly collaborative environment. They are systems thinkers whom enthusiastically take responsibility for (at least) the following 7 functions:
A social system has a core. From that core, human values: what is important to me, arise. To design a social system That Works, for the diversity of human beings that live in the 21st century we first understand the nature of human values. There is not just one level, in fact, what is important to us changes as the conditions we live in change. As our world becomes more complex humans have developed new codes that define what we value. When crisis hits, we often step back to less complex core values, get to the basics of life.
These core value needs are presented in order of magnitude. To begin to grasp the complexity below the simplicity it’s helpful to see each succeeding statement as a larger envelope wrapping (like Russian Dolls) around the previous statements resulting in a principle of transcend and include rather than transcend and ignore or reject.
Not everyone has all of these value needs, yet within any American social system for the early 21st century, all of these value needs will be demanded by at least some of the citizens.
Super-ordinate principle: Rights and Responsibility are two sides of the same coin.
Basic survival resources: shelter, food, clothing, heat and health.
Fellowship: protection from harm, reciprocity, stories/communication, neighbors/friends.
Individuality: freedom of expression, empowerment (to fill powerful) in living our own dreams/lives, to have an identity, to stand out, to create boundaries.
Transcendent Purpose and Meaning: live by a code of values and ethics, to align with something larger than self, family, organization or nation, to pursue truth, to enforce a rule of law, to serve.
Achievement: access to opportunity, work toward goals, to get ahead, to take calculated risks and receive the rewards, a space change or improve, uncover facts.
Caring and Sharing: global inclusion all people, listening to each other, connecting to our common humanness, experiencing our emotional bonds together, pluralism and equality.
Adaptive: living by natural flows and patterns, developing and using competence, radical self-responsibility and choice, flexible, resilient, engineering systems for living.
It’s from this Adaptive value system that an Office of Integration might emerge.
For sometime now, Jessie and I continually discuss the going-on’s of Howard County/Columbia from a perspective of curiosity, frustration, eagerness, and dare I claim - wisdom. Inside of our conversations, I personally, have been exploring the questions of:
What is it to live here?
What is the value I have to contribute, and
Why would I want to do anything different than I am already doing?
Today, I am ready to take the knowledge, the thinking, the observations and present an opening statement about how I, Cherie Beck, can be involved in this community.
