John,
I loved your response and found it enormously helpful. I have snipped two
parts below in order to make a follow-up comment.
John Dicus wrote:
...snip...
> Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.
> (Emile Charter)
>
> The last quote could be rephrased to say that "nothing is more dangerous
> than an option when it is the only one you have." Besides the meticulous
> planning that goes into launching a spacecraft and the serious reflection
> that precedes lighting a match, it's good to have choices.
>
...snip...
> Systems thinking is just that -- thinking systemically. Both consciously
> and subconsciously. To me, it's learning/recovering the ability to be
> systemically intuitive. It give you choices. If nearly 85% of what we do
> each day comes from that deep "autopilot" place inside of us, how much
> trouble can we keep ourselves out of (fewer unintended consequences) if we
> instinctively think and act systemically?
So we look at the action that started this thread, the idea of "ready.
fire, aim!" and judge it differently if it is against a background of
systemic thinking, of this kind of awareness (I like "deep autopilot"),
that you describe. Paradoxically, "ready fire aim" isn't what it sounds
like (and I'm not saying that you were proposing that) if it emerges or
plays out against such a background. The training that we have picked up,
the orientation that we have adopted, affects the way in which we attend
to situations.
When we think that we are acting reflexively, that we are quickly getting
into action we may just be paying attention to the tip of the iceberg. The
decision may have started a long time ago. We considered and dropped
choices even before we got to the actual moment when we think that we
actually made the decision, when we acted. There is some interesting
neurological work on this subject that suggests we may not be aware of all
the choices that we discarded, that we may give a different sense to what
has been chosen (and how) than is suggested by the activity inside our
brain.
--T.J. Elliott Cavanaugh Leahy http://idt.net/~tjell 914 366-7499
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