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INTRODUCTION
Gaian Democracies: Redefining Globalisation & People-Power by Roy Madron & John Jopling
Summary
Roy Madron: Biography
Radio Interview with Jane Taylor, from Resonance FM
Email address: rm(at)gaiandemocracy.net
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- Soft-systems theory provides the basic concepts and processes for thinking, acting and learning together to understand the configuration of the existing system and to embark purposefully on re-configuring it.
- By understanding the difference between ‘wicked’ problems (arising from non-linear systems complexity) and ‘tame’ problems (arising from the characteristics of linear system), citizens will be able to think, act and learn together successfully.
- Successfully reconfiguring our unjust and unsustainable Global Monetocracy and tackling the wicked problems it has created requires the adoption of a ‘purposeful’ or systems perspective, rather than mechanistic one.
We have shown two soft-systems concepts, ‘shared purposes and principles’ and ‘participatory change processes', as separate components of the Gaian democracy paradigm.
These soft-systems concepts can be used to reconfigure any complex human system from a school or a hospital to a government department, from a neighbourhood to a city to a whole nation. They provide the practical frameworks through which the citizens engaged in participatory change processes keep in close touch with the realities of the system that they and their liberating leaders are trying to improve. They build the knowledge and competencies needed for citizens to work creatively on their ‘wicked’ problems while observing the shared purposes and principles of the system as a whole.
Through their individual and collective success in reconfiguration processes, citizens and their liberating leaders gain in knowledge, competence and mutual trust. Thus equipped, they are able to tackle ever more complex and difficult ‘wicked' problems in their society.
The idea that government could become a learning experience for all concerned, including the leadership, is wholly foreign to command-and-control leaders. The application of these concepts to the political field will transform the way democracy and government works.
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