Agency, which can be thought of as conscious actions, intervenes in systems by disrupting or transforming patterns and relationships.
Agency, which can be thought of as conscious actions, intervenes in systems by disrupting or transforming patterns and relationships.
We are all entangled in systems that both ensure our survival and destruction. The responsibilities that we place on institutions, such as big oil, big banks, big pharma, etc., does not lie within these institutions but within the linkings between them. "An institution is made of people, each with their own biographies, and it exists within communi... See more
Nora Bateson • Nora Bateson — The Paradox of Agency
Brian Goodwin taught me that the most important lesson of complexity science is a shift of intention away from prediction and control to appropriate participation . The mental, emotional and psychological state of an intervener affects the outcome of any systems intervention. If we stop wanting to control change and shift to a responsive dance with... See more
Daniel Christian Wahl • Emergence and Design
Perhaps the greatest “phase transition” in our thinking that such an approach could engender is the maturation in our willingness to live with relatively high levels of uncertainty in the domains of complex phenomena—and thus give up on ideas like complete “cures,” the elimination of “risk,” the design of perfect “stability,” and achieving total “s
... See more