Subject: SD and critical pedagogy

Posted by Jaimie Cloud on 9/13/2011

Message:

Dear all especially Jay if you are reading this,

I incorporate systems thinking and system dynamics into our work to educate for sustainability. I am struggling with two ideas—and I need some help:


1.
If “One person’s gain is interdependent with everyone’s gain or one person’s folly can lead to folly for all”
And if
“ Favorable conditions for one species/group are unfavorable for another” or What is good for some parts of the system are bad for others and visa versa”,

Then what determines which way it goes? Can we predict which of those two results interdependence will yield?

1a. Is the best we can do to solve more than one problem at a time and minimize the creation of new problems?

2. I am still struggling with the notion that “problems and their solutions are endogenous—that they arise within a system, not from outside.”
I understand that once a problem has emerged—it is endogenous—but some problems actually were imposed from outside the system—AND even if the problems are endogenous, the solutions are often not—--they are often brought in from “the outside “—so what am I not understanding here?

Thank you thank you thank you for any light you can shed on either question.
Jaimie

Follow Ups:

SD and critical pedagogy - George Richardson 9/21/2011 
SD and critical pedagogy - Jane Pratt 9/21/2011
SD and critical pedagogy - Niall Palfreyman 9/14/2011 
SD and critical pedagogy - Ruth Fruland 9/13/2011 
SD and critical pedagogy - Janis Dutton 9/13/2011 
SD and critical pedagogy - Bill Braun 9/13/2011 
SD and critical pedagogy - Paul Newton 9/13/2011 
SD and critical pedagogy - Luis Alfaro 9/13/2011