General Discussion on the Approach as a Whole

A few questions have emerged during the dialogue (so far) that participants may wish to address. These include:

1. Strategies for action: suggest initiatives which could accelerate realization of a worlld around transition to sustainability practices. What key areas of emphasis (technology, public policy, education, open citizens' dialogue, etc.) would be key elements

2.What should the role of education be in relation to the challeng of such a transition and how should it best be organized?

3.The first principle highlights the concept of entropy as a basis for the range of possibilities in dealing with physical systems. The term (entropy) seems to be problematic since it is not universally understood. How could this be clarified and the intention of the principle be made easier to understand?

4.What would be the best way to make effective use of these principles (or a modified Version)?

5. Are there statements in the document with whic you fundamentally disagree?

6. Are there areas which need clarification or that could be strengthened in other ways?

7. Are there other topics that you think should be added to the discussion

Re: Emergent Questions

Michael Ben-Eli wrote:
A few questions have emerged during the dialogue (so far) that participants may wish to address. These include:

2.What should the role of education be in relation to the challenge of such a transition and how should it best be organized?

I previously suggested
(see http://bfi-internal.org/sustainability/node/91#comment-227), that appropriate levels of education (aka insight,awareness and knowledge through dilaogue and 1st hand experience)is an unavoidable pre-condition that must be achieved if any of the advanced principle based policies and operational implications proposed in this dialogue are to be fully undertood and implimented with competance.

I am not sure what you mean by 'organized'. Please clarify further.

I think that Education for Sustainability (EFS) must be organized so that it can be infused into our conciousness at home, at work, in schools, online ( for all grade levels, including adult continuing ed.) in public spaces, and even at places of relegious worship.

We are now grappling with preserving the symbiotic web of life, the mother of all complex systems. Your proposed principles and their respective policies and operational implications were concieved as a complex dynamic system. So to fully grasp them and to continually apply, test and evolve them on the ground we need to be able to really work competantly with complex systems.

Skill at mapping out and understanding 'whole systems dynamics' is a core competancy we all must acquire in order to deal with the enormous levels of complexity that we now face.

This skill needs to be supported by access to easy to use (age appropriate) tools that allow 'operational modeling and visualization of complex sytems' focused on principle based EFS. Without these tools I do not think we can develop the comprehensive solutions we desperately need.

The multi-user online "games for change movement" combined with the Geographic Information Systems (GIS)revolution (think google earth) now taking root in popular culture (not in schools) augmented by powerful modelling engines used in acedemia contain the hardware and software seeds for the next generation of comprehensive problem solvers.

I would consider organizing for educational needs to meet the challenges ahead in terms of identifying needed tools.

Dick Fischbeck's picture

entropy

Question 3 about entropy reminds me of this page link below because we might say entropy is that which is undesirable. This is a very general statement but one that most people can easily grasp. What can be simplier? I don't know a way around educating people about what design science is and why we need it. I hope this helps.

http://www.bfi.org/node/385

Design Science is the positive extension of passive resistance. Passive resistance bloodlessly dissipates the undesirable. Design Science bloodlessly gains the desirable.

——RBF to Karan Singh

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