John G. Bell
email: [email protected]
phone: (360) 754-9584
Application Essay
My
first contact with the term ÒSystems TheoryÓ was during a year-long program, The
Power and Limitations of Dialogue, at The Evergreen State College. One of the books in
this program was Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline. The discussion of learning
organizations in that book was especially interesting to me because of an
experience while working as a team manager for the technical staff at an
Internet service provider several years earlier. When I took over the duties of
team manager, I worked to flatten the hierarchy and promote the idea that the
department was a continual and accelerating learning environment. Reading the
book reminded me that one of the upper management had asked me if I had read
Senge's work because of similarities to what I was attempting. There is a
strong connection for me between my prior personal experience and the new
language and granularity with which I could speak of that experience gained by
reading Senge.
In
some sense, I feel strongly that this is an example of how learning structure
and concepts after having gathered experience is inherently connecting, whereas
learning the structure and concepts prior to experience is inherently
disconnecting. Connecting is an awareness of being a member of a group or
community, the need to associate the self with something greater than just the
self. Disconnecting is the process of individuation and the need for self-worth
as a distinct individual. I started to call this the ÒTwo BrainsÓ conflict
after the two minds in the work of Lawrence LeShan[1].
In this analysis, experience prior to learning the concepts and language with
which to describe the experience is an inherently connecting influence that
strengthens shared history. This mutuality helps the individual to maintain the
memory of shared co-created experience within a community of others. Even more
importantly, the direct co-creation of experience is a strong associative
emotional bond to other individuals.[2]
One
of the primary questions I examined in the study of dialogue is how to maintain
the space of dialogue in the presence of those with inimical motives toward
that dialogue. Many of the conceptual tools available did not feel complete.
Primary they were all structuralist and ignored important issues of dynamic
complexity, cause and effect. Melding ideas from Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent
Communication,[3]
Lawrance LeShan's Why We Love War, and the conflict models from the mediation and
conflict resolution training required a systemic dimension. By the end of the
year, another student in class and I had developed a conceptual tool, a mental
model, that appears to provide useful leverage toward understanding intra-,
inter- and extra-personal conflict and change.[4]
As a team we presented this work to the other program participants and
developed a very basic link between Myers-Brigg Type Indicators through a
survey on campus.[5]
One
of the fundamental components of this attempt at systemic conflict analysis is
the way that individuals act like communities of interests and how communities
act like individuals. The individual experience of conflict and change
management is both a personal journey and a process of existing in a community
of others. The community experience of conflict and change management is a
community journey and a process of attempting to create alignment, a systemic
individual, if you will. There is a cause and effect relationship that cannot
be adequately explained by structuralist personality types because these do not
explain the interconnected and interdependent way in which the
individual-in-conflict and the community-in-conflict are in a shared higher
order conflict with each other. Clearly, people are not archetypes, but the
roles that people assume can be. These roles can determine behaviour in a
unrecognized system of change. I hope to focus on the further development,
examination and evaluation of this theoretical model in the future.
After
the intense focus on dialogue, I wanted to examine specific historical and
current examples conflict. I was able to extend this in the program Dissent,
Injustice and the Making of America. I was able to investigate historical political, social
and judicial conflicts during the Early Republic and Constitutional period of
the United States.[6] I was able
to extend this through the early 20th century to include labor and
gender equality struggles. By looking at specific examples, I worked to surface
systemic ways in which dissent, as conflicting ideology, is normalized by the
dominant narrative and ways that dissent accelerates to meet the challenge.[7]
This raises an important question of how competition between cultural
narratives is resolved and points out that the marginalization of plurality is
a potentially dangerous side effect of having a dominant narrative.
One
of the areas of investigation that I was not able to explore was the way in
which comparative legal systems are cultural answers to questions of individual
and community truth. Legal
traditions are cultural world views actualized and that they vary represents
specific and unique answers to conflict resolution. The variances and invariances of
these traditional systems, both in a historical and spatial comparison, are a
tool to explore dangers and opportunity present in conflict.
Another
area of examination is the way in which the social and economic transformations
of the modern era have created a lattice of disconnect between individuals and
communities. On a macroeconomic level, this is a conflict between the Core,
Semi-periphery and the Periphery that is exemplified in the visceral and deep
social and economic wounds created over the issue of globalization.[8]
On a microeconomic level, this is a struggle for advantage and benefit between
individuals living in community, a struggle for dominance over shared history
comprised of time, space and value. The importance of thinking systemically
about the way that global issues affect communities and businesses cannot be
overstated, but it should also be clear that the influence of conflict extends
even to the individual level. The choices communities and individuals make in
the face of conflicts that they cannot analyze are choices made at the edge of
a fearsome precipice.
From
the brochure, the overall vision for the Center for Creative Change is one that
"prepares students to envision and lead effective, sustainable change in
organizations, businesses and communities." There is a strong element of
community, real world interaction in "action research projects." I am
very interested in issues of political philosophy and economy as well as social
movements and dissent. These are all systemic features of living history and an
examination of these is to no small part an attempt to get at surfacing the
systems where, as Martin Luther King said, Òracism, economic exploitation and
militarism are all tied together.Ó[9]
This is about how these world-systems relate to systems of communities and individuals.
Of course, Peter Senge's work points out that the business world is also
related and important in this relationship.
The
Antioch program, in general, offers me the opportunity to do academic and real
world investigation of change and change management. My specific goal is the
acquisition of systemic language and concepts for analysis and synthesis. Although somewhat circular, I
want to develop a stronger systems framework to examine systemic frameworks.
This is a recursive project to concretize philosophy as a systemic framework,
matched with the willingness to exhume, examine, evaluate and potentially
exchange frameworks for understanding systems.
My
activities in mediation and dialogue facilitation are examples of bring this
into the real world. Also, for the last 4 years, I have been working in
non-profits to develop a library automation system for underfunded and rural
libraries that brings tools for community information systems to areas, and
people, that have previously been unable to take advantage of advanced digital
information access. I have also been doing preparatory academic work in
economics, political philosophy, political and legal history. These are all
related skills rooted in community, and conflict and change management. There's
an important element of real-world direct action, in the sense of specific
experiential work, in all of these projects that is reciprocal to the
intellectual or academic work.
In reference
to skills and experiences, I have provided a work history of my last 10 years
and a list of some significant community activities to supplement the
transcripts of my academic career.
Works
Cited
Cornell, Saul. The
Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in America,
1788-1828. University of North
Carolina Press.
King,
Rev. Martin Luther. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.
<http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html>.
LeShan,
Lawrence. Why We Love War. Jan-Feb 2003, Utne Magazine.
McCormick,
William. America's Half-Century. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Rosenberg,
Marshall. Compassionate Communication. <http://www.loveandcommunity.com/marshall.htm>.
Senge,
Peter. The Fifth Discipline. Doubleday.
WGBH Boston. NOVA: Secrets of the Mind. Feat. Dr. V. S. Ramachandran. 2001, PBS
[1]Laurence LeShan explains these two modes of human thought in the article Why We Love War.
[2]The work of Dr. V. S. Ramachandran demonstrates the way in which the lack of an emotional connection can override intellectual determination. He shows that the neurobiological structures of perception and emotion are essentially connected. When this connection is dysfunctional, the lack of an emotional response tied to perception can cause an individual to fail in recognizing their own parents, for example, and to believe them to be imposters.
[3]Marshall Rosenburg's use of the jackal and giraffe is introduced in Compassionate Communication.
[4]For
reference, see the safari presentation is available
online: The Safari: In Search of the Elephant
<http://www.arlecchino.org/ildottore/palod/The_Safari_-_12mar03.html>
[5]The
survey conclusion is online: Myers Briggs and Safari Journey Experiment
<http://arlecchino.org/ildottore/palod/paper_-_safari_and_myers_briggs.html>
[6]Of
particular interest on this topic is Saul Cornell's The Other Founders.
[7]My final paper for that program is available online: Analysis of dissent, injustice and the making of the United States: an induction from vitriol to victory; a deduction from justice to jurisprudence. <http://www.arlecchino.org/ildottore/diamoa/final.html>
[8]The world-system theory analysis in William McCormick's America's Half-Century was my introduction.
[9]This
is from a powerful and still disturbingly relevant speech by Martin Luther King
in a 1967 speech, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.