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In this article there is the authentic voice of the human activity system under stress.
This voice happens to be British, white and 'anglo-celtic-saxon-norman-norseman' one would assume. But the sentiments could be resounding within one of any number of languages around the world. It seems a mournful song of a slowly emerging realisation of past blind ignorance of the future reality. Perhaps on the assumption that they would be: a) here for ever; and b) living on the 'top of the food chain' with respect to most others. Where can they run to? Down-under? But for how long?
"To my astonishment, I visited a shopping centre in Manchester to find several prayer rooms for Muslims within the centre but no chapels for Christians who might wish to pray or meditate. Times are certainly changing. Churches are being turned into mosques at a rapid rate. The last time England was invaded
successfully was 1066. Without doubt by the year 2066 Britain will be Muslim and the Islamic flag will fly over 10 Downing Street unless major changes are made."
And what is exactly wrong with this? Yes, it seems that the 'pipers at the gates of dawn' are now playing the bagful pipes. I hear it. I have common ancestors with this man. But I heard it some 20 years ago. As did many others, for thousands of years in fact.
Lenin said it: they will sell you the rope to hang themselves with. This voice from ‘down-under’ is appreciating System 4 data (the future) and calling for System 5 to react with new border management.
So the merchants have discovered customer focus, and customers with money are increasingly appreciating the pleasures of short timely prays, and one would assume avoiding pig-meat, alcohol, and useless fashions of vanity – some of the mainstays of the ‘Western economies’.
And the money and wealth flows in from the oil-rich ‘East’.
From my research, Moslems have a number of advantages by virtue of the Islamic system. They know where they come from and where they are going – i.e. a degree of certainty. Above all their tribal issues of separation ranges the arch of the Islamic framework to provide guidance throughout their lives. How well they apply this wisdom is a different issue. We could, as a simple start, assume that Islam is a system that complies with the VSM.
It is therefore sustainable – and can only be ignored, avoided or embraced. But not corrupted. Anything less than the basic fundamentals is not Islam – be definition. People of the West who have not studied this system in any detail need to understand this if they are to engage with it, or those who profess to practice it, on a firm footing.
Capitalism needs cheep labour – it has gone to “China”, a country and a metaphor for low prices in the Western shops. China needs oil and energy. This is System 1 operational activity – “value adding” in Hoebeke’s (1994) 4-domain VSM-based model.
System 2, that force of System 1 resource management is working hard. How to make sense of it? Is it the IMF at work?
The very substance of differentiation in the minds of the “West” – leaders and thinking individuals – a sense of moral and technological superiority is being questioned. Firstly the data increasingly does not support the former. There is just too much crime, ill-health, fear to call this ‘success’.
Secondly, the realisation that the war on boundaries, both real and psychological, is no longer effective with great weapons of mass destruction. The new paradigm is urban. Graffiti is more powerful at eroding the sense of will and pride and superiority than atom bombs.
Here dialogue wins. And this dialogue, has been played out with all the essential case studies, scenarios and outcomes within the Islamic system. The identity and history are welded within an active oral tradition that has withstood 1,400 - 1,500 years of testing. In my opinion, this cannot be changed. Nor should it be.
But in addition to this authentic ‘initial conditions’, there are like all system suffer, great barnacles of tribal self interest, personal neglect, and plain confused data that is more chaff than wheat. And most, even within the Islamic system find it difficult to see this, as people in other systems struggle to see their own flaws.
To bring this to some sort of close: there is an opportunity to bypass this subsidiary system’s noise about identity, and focus on taking a solid debate to the boundaries of all systems. As System 2 works for a new global alignment, we also must work within the microcosm, our local context.
At present we see various System 5* events – that special VSM “Algedonic signal” alarm system from the system-three level for registering threat or opportunity to the whole needing rapid response. Many thinking people of all sides (of the elephant) can see and provide good diagnosis. But what we need is a suspension of the “prognosis” by the actors of all systems, while greater understanding is achieved. It is not about identity in the systems paradigm: it’s about sustainable governance of a complexity on the edge of chaos. Nothing has changed: yet. We all need to. And sooner rather than later many would believe.
How? Is the question.
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Ref erence
Hoebeke, L. (1994). Making Work Systems Better: A Practitioner’s Reflections. Chichester: Wiley.
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