In 1972 a group of MIT scientists wrote The Limits to Growth.  Using sophisticated computer modeling, the authors — Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows and William W. Behrens III — showed the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet.  The book, which became an international best-seller,  shocked the world and generate a mixture of praise, criticism and skepticism.

Today the  Club of Rome and the Smithsonian Institution Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet in Washington DC are hosting a day-long seminar on its legacy.  You can watch it live on the web from 9.00 am to 6:00 pm Eastern US time (It’s recorded too, if you can’t listen in today).   Here’s the link:  http://www.si.edu/consortia/limitstogrowth2012

I encourage you to pause for even a few moments today to listen in.  Then sit down at dinner tonight with your friends or family. Ask this question:  how can we prosper on a on a finite planet?  What might that look like?

For good reading on the subject, check out:

Alan AtKisson’s Life Beyond Growth

Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth

Personally, I take my continued inspiration from the last chapter of Limits to Growth.  This chapter focuses on the “unscientific tools”  we can use to transition to sustainability:

VISIONING

NETWORKING

TRUTH-TELLING

LEARNING

… and my favorite,

LOVING.

More than 50 students from the Escola Municipal Jose Calil Filho, an elementary school in Macae (about four hours north of Rio de Janerio) cram two-to-a-seat in a steamy classroom.  It is the day before summer (and Christmas) break in Brazil and the tiny classroom is about to burst with excitement.   These students, ranging in age from 8-11, are here to listen to a lady from the U.S. talk about something called “living systems”.

Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?

I would have thought so, but I was that lady and I couldn’t have been more impressed by the beautiful minds that greeted me that morning.

With students, teachers and SEED volunteers in Macae

I was there to pilot a workshop for SEED that integrated three “literacies”:  systems, science and self-knowledge.  Despite the steamy conditions, the students were curious, attentive and ready to learn.

Showing a straight line of causality (front row) and closed loops (second row)

Working in groups of three to four, the student-detectives were tasked with figuring out the connections, some obvious and some hidden, in a farm setting (using a systems playkit).  Many students were surprised to discover, for instance, the central role chickens can play in the health of the cows and the pasture.

There’s much to report from that December workshop (you can read more about it here) but for readers of this blog I have to report an observation that continues to fascinate and challenge me:

When asked to show the interconnections on a farm (what influenced what), some students, seemingly regardless of age and gender, laid out a straight line of cause and effect (see picture above), while others (see the second row) created twisty, curvy connections that, occasionally, looped back on themselves (what we would call a feedback loop).  (To learn about feedback loops in farm settings, see the Healthy Chickens, Healthy Pastures Curriculum Guide).

Badgered by Bateson

I remember being a little annoyed by Gregory Bateson’s claim that: “Adults have a chronic inability to understand cyclical, patterned phenomena such as interpersonal relationships and a variety of biological processes.”

“Chronic inability”.  Really?   After investigating children’s and adult’s intuitive understandings of complex systems for the past 15 years,  I’ve concluded that Bateson was on to something.   Deep misconceptions about the dynamics of complex systems — whether the focus is climate, food, energy, obesity, or the environment — do exist, even among highly educated adults (see my research with  John Sterman and colleagues, and Harvard’s Understanding of Consequence Project, for a multitude of examples). In my own research, I found that a significant number of students and adults used “open-loop” or one-way causal thinking when “closed-loop” causality or feedback was present, for instance, in situations involving predator-prey relationships  or savings accounts.

Caution:  Straight Line Thinking Can Be Dangerous

These deep misconceptions can be dangerous. In the natural world, we know that health and renewal occur through closed-loop cycles  — water, oxygen, nitrogen, even solar.  Yet when we disrupt these natural cycles*, we see big consequences — famine, flooding, and more.  And then there is policy resistance, when the solutions to problems often make the problem worse. Think road building programs meant to reduce congestion that end up increasing traffic, delays and pollution.  Or flood control efforts such as levees and dams that prevent the natural dispersion of excess water and so have led to more floods. John Sterman, who gives us these examples, argues that “policy resistance arises because we  do not understand the full range of feedbacks operating in the system.”

The costs of fixing any one these problems is high.  The cost of learning about cycles and feedback is low.

Back to the question of loop and lines.  What led some students to straight lines and others to loops?   I don’t have the answers yet but I’m hoping there are others out there who will think about this question with me.  In the meantime, I’m going back to George Richardson’s Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory for inspiration.

Please be in touch.  I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

Loops…

…vs. lines

________________________________________________________

NOTES:  *For example, urban sprawl and the paving over of wetlands, grasslands and forests often disrupts nutrient, animal and water cycles.  Ground that is unpaved absorbs water and stores it for use by plants.  With more pavement, less water is absorbed by the ground which means there is less water for plants to absorb.

The big, black spider with the blinking eyes is still up on our front lawn and my Day of the Dead “witch” still hangs on my front door.
They’re already selling candy canes in the grocery store.  Isn’t Thanksgiving next?  When I pass  the egg nog and “Christmas Blend” coffee, instead of feeling cheery, I feel a rumble in my stomach.  It’s a mix between dread and fear that even if I start now,  I just won’t get it all done in time.

Then I remember last year’s holiday “experiment” and I relax.  There’s hope!

Last year,  I realized that vacations helped to calm the jangly nerves of my family and give a boost to my over-worked husband, but they weren’t enough.  We needed a good dose of what my friend  Sara Schley calls Radical Renewal (and what Joe Lieberman calls “The Gift of Rest).*  Other than through sleep, how did I and my family renew ourselves? It was a good question.  So, I decided to try an experiment:  I’d go “merrily unplugged” — no computer, no e-mails — between December 23^rd, my husband’s birthday and my birthday, December 31st.

Before I logged off, I quickly answered the most important e-mails, cleaned off my desk, mailed out the bills.  I had fun thinking up and “Out of Office” message (which I found out later was source of a lot of interest, imitation and consternation).  When I finally turned the computer OFF (not on SLEEP), I felt like I was closing up a summer home for the winter, turning off the pipes so they wouldn’t burst in my absence.

I quickly concluded that this was a big,  adventure.  The last time I went unplugged like this was when my babies were born.   I’ll always remember and cherish that cocoon-like state that emerged as each baby came home:  the noise of the outside world kept at bay, the magic of this new human being our only focus.

Would I be able to reclaim some of the insulated feeling?

Could I actually resist logging in?  Could I step off that well-worn path to my computer and back, the one I probably walk 10-20 times a day “to check”?

The good news is, I did resist.  But it wasn’t easy.  For the first 48 hours, I felt twitchy, my own version of EAW, e-mail addiction withdrawal.  In the end, I found it easiest to stay out of my office.  As my nervous system began to settle, I watched what was happening around me.  I sat down on the sofa one after to write Christmas cards, and stayed there. There was no “just a second, I’ll be write back” to check my e-mail.  I just sat.  I noticed my three children, ages 5, 9 and 12, gravitate to the sofa, and stayed, orbiting in and out of my bit of celestial space.  My typical restless, chattering, list-making mind – what the Buddhists call “Monkey Mind”–  began to settle.  By the third day, I was giddy with a sense of presence, as if my whole center of gravity shifted my head to heart and belly.

Just as I was beginning to feel the loud silence from the outside world, and I began to have a sinking feeling that my “system” wasn’t working, I started to receive a trickle of phone calls:

“Is Ted available for a birthday party tomorrow?  I saw your message so thought I’d better call.”

“There’s an illustrator I want you to meet.  When you get back on-line, check out his website.”

The folks who needed to get in touch with me, did.  The e-mails that weren’t urgent, just accumulated, like letters in my mailbox. At first I dreaded thinking about the number of accumulated e-mails, but then I reminded myself that if there was anything urgent, they’d call me.  This unplugged idea was working!

Six days in a flaw in my system showed up:  my husband took my two boys skiing in a low-cell coverage area in Vermont.  Essentially, we were both off the electronic highway — me intentionally, him unintentionally – for two days.  Anyone with kids’ sports schedules knows, that the schedules can change on a moments notice, and the way you learn about those changes is through e-mail.  So, neither one of us got the coach’s e-mail until it was too late.

So that one fell through the cracks (although the coach could have called).

When the New Year began, my patience level was way up, my anxiety level was way down and my capacity for deep thought was back again.  Did going unplugged work for me?  You bet.  Getting some good sleep helped too.

Now we’re headed into the holidays again, and it feels good to know I’ll be going unplugged again soon.   But I also realize, that just as Sara and her family unplug for Shabbat on Friday night, there are more frequent ways I can my family can unhook, unplug, and just relax and renew.

As we head toward the holidays, the kids are pushing to get Mom an iPhone.

I’ll become more efficient, yes, but…I’ll let you know how that one goes.

________________________________________

*I could write a whole  blog about Edith Cobb, (b. 1895), another inspiration for building renewal into our every day lives.

In her book, The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Cobb writes of the body’s natural “homeostatic wisdom”. I learned about homeostasis in school, but never thought to look for the wisdom in it.  Cobb referred to those cyclical “behavioral patterns of regulation and integration.” (P. 43), such as respiration, that allows us to maintain equilibrium. It was this state of equilibrium that allows species survive and thrive.  Maintaining equilibrium means a constant set of adjustments.  We know this well when we think about how a thermostat works.  
If the temperature in a house is too cold, the thermostat will turn on the furnace, seeking to reach the desired temperature (or goal) as set on the thermostat.  The furnace raises the temperature until the goal is reached and eventually the furnace shuts off.

This “self-regulating” or balancing system maintains a goal, in this case, a steady temperature in a room.  If we look at ourselves, the process of maintaining our temperature is also a self-regulating system.   We shiver when we’re cold to warm up our muscles and sweat when we’re hot to cool them down, all the while trying to achieve a steady temperature.  So, self-regulating or balancing feedback loops are goal-seeking but they also bring renewal.  Think about the dynamics of stress and exercise.  For many people, exercise is a helpful way to manage stress.  As stress levels kick in, we exercise, with exercise, stress goes down (of course, there are many folks who exercise regularly whether they’re feeling stressed or not).

Now my question is:  Where are the built-in adjustments that help me and my family to maintain equilibrium? Where are the cycles of renewal in my own life?