The Sustainability Forum

I have only begun reading the subject book, and wanted to begin a thread on it. I have read many papers from thwink, and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. As you know, I came into the process a classic activist, but have seen the way; however, I sometimes revert to old ways. I seem to want to drive the point home a little more, a little harder. So my comments may have some of that. If so, you or someone can let me know I’m off base.

I'd like to comment in this post on only the first chapter, The Predicament. My scientific background says too that we should begin with the problem statement. The problem is stated in this first chapter, somewhat, but I believe that it could have been more thoroughly explained.

In The Message, the bottom line is that “the process must fit the problem”. Because progressives have failed here, we may have done so because of an inadequate process, or poorly defined problem, or both. And because this book will hopefully show how we can correct these, I believe the problem’s genesis should be better articulated in The Predicament.

Actually, The Predicament, then gives nearly as much space to the method of solution, System Dynamics, and its founder, and an example of a successful application as it does to the predicament. At this point, the chapter reads more like an Introduction, than a problem statement.

Here is the book this thread is about:
http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/005/DuelingLoops_Book.htm


Hi Rick,

Thanks for initiating this thread. Focused feedback on the Dueling Loops book is going to help tremendously in making it a better book.

Regarding: “The problem is stated in this first chapter, somewhat, but I believe that it could have been more thoroughly explained.” - The chapter on the predicament tries to very briefly define the problem that the rest of the book goes on to solve. The chapter says “The predicament is that progressivism has long been blocked from achieving its ideals, due to systemic change resistance.” What did you feel was missing from the problem statement and explanation?

Regarding: “I believe the problem’s genesis should be better articulated in The Predicament.” – What I’ve tried to do is write the shortest book possible, on the subject of the Dueling Loops. This is why the chapter on the predicament runs only three pages. The problem’s genesis starts to get into analysis of the problem. It is addressed at length in the bigger book on Analytical Activissm, but I thought it best to omit it here.

I’m starting to wonder if The Message should be omitted. It may be too much of a stretch for those completely new to the ideas at Thwink. An earlier version of the Dueling Loops book did not have The Message. Do you think it should be removed? Or maybe moved to the end?

Regarding: “At this point, the chapter reads more like an Introduction, than a problem statement.” – Good point. The material on system dynamics was included as a smooth transition from problem statement to analysis. It introduces the central analysis tool. In a bigger book it would be a chapter in itself.

Thanks again,

Jack

Hi Jack,

Thanks for your response. Your first two main paragraphs both speak to my notion that the problem statement was inadequate; “…could have been more thoroughly explained.”; that it stops at change resistance. What I thought was, that it would be important to let the reader know why we have such crippling change resistance. From your work (I have no original thought here), we have change resistance because of Overt Capitalism, the Powell Memo, the nearly exclusively right-wing, well-funded Think Tanks, the corporate proxy, and the like. (This group of problems could stop short of, or include, your “New Dominant Life Form”, which you introduce later in the book.) I think the reader of this book should benefit from this information, whether it’s in another volume or not. It could easily be stated in half a page, I’d think.

I don’t think that The Message should be omitted. It reads like a purpose and scope, common to scientific papers. Your purpose is to present the message in this book. Perhaps to effect a scope, if you wanted one, you might say too what the book is limited to, what it doesn’t say, and why (because other material is in another volume(s).

Regarding The Predicament chapter including the transition statements about the principal analysis—system dynamics, I really don’t see why these statements couldn’t be moved to a following (new) chapter. The Predicament could be expanded, maybe as suggested above; the material on the system dynamics could be a small chapter, perhaps entitled, “The Solution”, or “The Way Out”, or such. Or, they could be combined in a single chapter, The Predicament and the Solution.

Will have more later as I get back into the book.

Thanks,

Rick

Rick,

Regarding: "we have change resistance because of ...(snip) I think the reader of this book should benefit from this information, whether it’s in another volume or not. It could easily be stated in half a page, I’d think." - The rest of the book gets into the root cause of systemic change resistance. It is a dominant race to the bottom. The presence of "Overt Capitalism, the Powell Memo, the nearly exclusively right-wing, well-funded Think Tanks, the corporate proxy, and the like" which you mention are all consequences of a dominant race to the bottom. After you've read the whole book, if this is not fairly obvious then we need to make it so.

Nice suggestion, to mention what the scope of the book is. I will add this to the manuscript.

"The Predicament and the Solution" is close. What do you think about "The Predicament and System Dynamics"?

Jack

Jack,

After I finish the book, I'll ascertain whether I believe that you covered the underlying cause of change resistance, as per your suggestion. And regarding the chapter title, "The Predicament and Systems Analysis as the Solution" might be good.

I had a few comments regarding chapters 2-4.

I'm probaby beating a butterfly with a hammer, but here's a few comments regarding chapter 2, and how modern-day examples might be instructive to the reader:
p. 8, re: the Swift boat ads; the paragraph discusses only the ad hominem aspects, but fails to mention the blatant lies/falsehoods devised by the Republicans.
p. 10, re: "False Promises"; perhaps give an example(s): Bush reverses his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
p. 11, re: "Pushing the Hot Button"; example might be as Bush blunders spectacularly and his ratings drop further on several occasions, his administration elevates the terrorism threat barometer to redirect the public's attention away from his bumbling. (these are statistically valid by the way).
p. 12, re: "Secrecy", example is Cheney's secret Energy Policy Committee and its membership, activities, and recommendations.

A technical comment: Regarding simulation periods of interest. Generally, simulation periods should be both realistic and involve a period of time of interest to the problem. I don't think that simulation periods for social and political system behavior should be 500 years, much less, 5,000 years. Global climate change and our potential fall, owing to lack of living sustainably are now discussed in terms of tens of years! Not even a hundred(s). Very seldom do we read or hear anymore of events or situations "by the end of the century". It's now, "...by 2030, by 2050", or the like. Also, graphs showing results of those simulations would benefit greatly by the truncating of those unrealistic future years and of the asymtotic portions of the lines, and thus by the expansion of the remainder, more germane part of the graph.

Chapter 3 is right on. It seems that the cause of the change resistance, discussed in my first two posts, might be placed here together with the definition of the New Dominant Life Form, e.g. p. 23. Also, at the top of page 23, you say that "most" [corporations] "are doing the best they can, and are basically good." Do you know this to be true, or are you merely supposing? Reference? I wonder if "most" is more realistically "many", or even "some".

Chapter 4 too, is on the money. My comments on realistic simulation periods apply to runs presented in this chapter too. The second paragraph on page 25 is quite powerful. I wonder if you might even append the final sentence with ", not even the Club of Rome."
On the last page, you ask the reader the quesition, "Is the model correct", and you discuss that this is the start of what could be a larger experiment. That begs the question, Are there even colleges and universities teaching and having programs giving degrees for system dynamics/modeling? This is not so much a question regarding the book, just my musings.

Good job; more later.
I hope that some other folks will weigh into the thread as they read the little book.
Thanks again for the opportunity to comment and thanks for what you do.

Rick

Rick – Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Based on this:

“The Message” has been changed to “Scope and Message.” The following paragraph has been added to the beginning of the page:

The scope of this short book is limited to a promising hypothesis of the structure of the dueling LOOPS and how that knowledge might be applied. If you find yourself thirsting for further discussion of system dynamics, the System Improvement Process, or any other concepts very briefly introduced here, please see the additional material at Thwink.org.

I’ve changed the title of chapter one from “The Predicament” to “Extracting Ourselves from the Predicament with System Dynamics.” An additional page of info on system dynamics has been added, including a screen shot of a modeling tool in action. This serves to convince the reader that system dynamics is not all that complicated. It’s as easy as running a spreadsheet or a word processor, once you know how.

Regarding: “p. 8, re: the Swift boat ads; the paragraph discusses only the ad hominem aspects, but fails to mention the blatant lies/falsehoods devised by the Republicans.” – I’ve added “outright lies” to the previous paragraph.

Regarding: “p. 10, re: "False Promises"; perhaps give an example(s): Bush reverses his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions.” – In an effort to keep the book international, I’ve added these two paragraphs:

One of the largest false promises in recent history was the way Russian communism promised one thing but delivered another. It promised rule by the masses for the masses, but delivered a totalitarian state. To justify its continued existence and hide the broken promise, the communist system manufactured a steady stream of soothing lies and used harsh repressive techniques on those who did not swallow the lies.

Václav Havel, writing in 1978 in Versuch, in der Wahrheit zu leben (An attempt to live in truth) pointed out the diabolical, self-destructive nature of this approach. It was the ultimate vicious cycle, because “it turned victims into accomplices: by threatening them and their descendents with disadvantages, it coerces the victims to participate. When Havel became President [of Czechoslovakia in 1989] he reminded his fellow citizens of their complicity arising from their coming to terms with life in lying. Consequently, he exhorted them in his address before the first democratic general elections to vote for candidates who ‘are used to telling the truth and do not wear a different shirt every week’.”

Regarding: “p. 11, re: "Pushing the Hot Button"; example might be as Bush blunders spectacularly and his ratings drop further on several occasions, his administration elevates the terrorism threat barometer to redirect the public's attention away from his bumbling. (these are statistically valid by the way).” – Nice example, but the passage already has enough to illustrate what pushing the hot button is.

Regarding: “p. 12, re: "Secrecy", example is Cheney's secret Energy Policy Committee and its membership, activities, and recommendations.” – (I’m working on this right now….)

You can download the latest version of the Dueling Loops book to see the changes.

Thanks,

Jack