When god saw the tower of Babel he said, "And
the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people,
and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and
nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down,
and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
(Genesis 11) Until then the world that had spoken one language was splintered and we have
been reconstructing ever since. As I look back over my two years at Harvard I learned many
languages. Languages of leadership, learning, technology, public policy, knowledge
management, adult development, and Complex Adaptive Systems. Unfortunately, they I have
not given them an area where they may interact like a Complex Adaptive System .
I believe that by setting my thesis as a boundary around these
five classes and seven languages
that something will emerge that is of greater cognitive complexity than in addressing any one
class individually. I seek to do this because I recognize:
That systemic problems start out as individual
policies
I have the power to change individual policies
Changing individual policies impacts upon public
problems
Language is a theme that arcs across the various subject domains
of this paper. There are many
languages taught within the intellectual disciplines and in order to become fluent in them I must
move beyond the mere repetition of vocabulary and mindless obedience to grammar. Yet each
of these is the foundation upon which fluency is built, and it is built through use. In building this
fluency I will use
Anthony Judge's Hazard's of System Building to temper my fervor and zealotry:
1. You identify with your system. It cost you blood to build it, and if it is attacked, it is your
blood that is being shed.
2. You cannot tolerate tentativeness, suspension of judgment, or anything that does not fit the
system.
3. You cannot apprehend anyone else's system unless it supports yours.
4. You believe that other systems are based on selected data.
5. Commitment to systems other than your own is fanaticism.
6. You come to believe that your system entitles you to proprietorship of the entities within it.
7. Since humor involves incongruity, and your system explains all seeming incongruities, you
lose your sense of humor.
8. You lose you humility.
9. You accept all those points - insofar as they apply to builders of other systems.
10. So do 1. (P.S. I hope I believe in the cult of fallibility)
I built my current system upon the following
assumptions. First, that my master's thesis will
equal more that the sum of the individual components of my class projects:
1. I
