Dancing With Systems
By Donella Meadows
The Dance
1. Get the beat.
2. Listen to the wisdom of the system.
3. Expose your mental models to the open air.
4. Stay humble. Stay a learner.
5. Honor and protect information.
6. Locate responsibility in the system.
7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.
8. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.
9. Go for the good of the whole.
10. [...]
Taking on the Erosive Cycle of Money and Political Power
by Elizabeth R. Sawin
— February 4, 2002 —
Every day I try to protect my children from problems I didn’t create and cannot solve alone. I spread creams on their skin to shield them from the UV radiation that sneaks in through our thinned ozone layer. I try to feed them food free of pesticides and hormones, but I know their [...]
The Perversity of Farm Bills
by Hal Hamilton and Elizabeth Sawin
— February 1, 2002 —
Right now Congress is trying to hatch a new Farm Bill. But like every congress charged with writing farm policy for the past fifty years, the legislature is ignoring an important reality — farm policy keeps on delivering less of what we want and more of what we don’t want. Congress [...]
When It Hurts So Good: How WNC Could Benefit Economically From Tackling Air Quality
by Andrew Jones
— January 6, 2002 —
A monument to the boll weevil stands in Enterprise, Alabama’s town square. It is a robed, Statue of Liberty look-alike holding an enormous black bug over its head. The statue’s head is bowed in somber respect.
The boll weevil ravaged 60 percent of the region’s cotton crop in 1915, and even more the next year, [...]
Imagine A Human Species Intent On Enriching The Earth
by Elizabeth Sawin
— 1 January, 2002 —
The energy of the sun, captured by plants and passed on to animals, makes everything possible – dolphins arcing out of the ocean, geese moving across the sky, and also people, stirring their morning oatmeal, falling in love, or painting a barn.
In this truth lies beautiful poetry – the realization that in our children’s [...]
