Hello At:
Thanks very much for your authentic presentation of concern for the plight
of people. I'm someone from the ROTW who really had some doubts about how
the ROTW handled South Africa. It's really a sad state of affairs.
In Ontario, Canada, we have a government that has actively pursued
substantial cuts to social services to not only reduce our fiscal deficit,
but deliver a tax cut that benefits mostly middle and upper class members
of our province. Families on social assistance headed by single moms is
one group that has been a target of the cuts.
When you cut the welfare payment to a family headed by a single mom, some
really destructive things happen. It becomes harder and harder to put
nutritious meals on the table for the family. We have more children going
to bed hungry in Toronto than ever before. Hungry children become ill
more often. They find their way into the medical system more often. The
effect to the province is that the cut to the welfare cheque gets offset
in increased health care costs (which is a government expenditure).
It gets worse. Hungry children don't study well. Schools provide
breakfast programs. Many hungry children end up in remedial classes to
try to keep up with their classmates. Remedial education is very
expensive. It more than offsets the cuts to welfare. Education is
another provincial cost.
It gets even worse. Hungry children who are poorer learners don't end up
doing well in school. This reduces their future employment prospects. It
seems to me that welfare cuts today are going to simply create the next
generation of people on social assistance -- the hungry children in
families on social assistance today.
At, the world is full of people who, with understandable intentions, make
the situation of the world worse. They simply do not see systems. No one
gets up in the morning and says "I think I'll contribute to global warming
today." Yet, many of us do.
Systems thinkers can show the world better ways to deal with the
complexity of real-world issues. It's possible to explore problems
without blame and come up with simple actions that can have great impact
with few or no adverse consequences.
To me, systems thinking is much more than a good idea. I believe that if
humanity cannot make a significant dent in its habit of fragmented
thinking, we will harm many if not most of our species -- unintentionally.
Jason Smith
jsmith@quantumsolutions.on.ca (work)
"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." - Yogi Berra
--"Jason Smith" <jsmith@quantumsolutions.on.ca>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>