2019-01-01 – Note to TUM-SRM Class – Rev.1.

Dear All,

As we share, with one another, best wishes for the New Year, might it be
a renewing of our efforts to ensure our grandchildren and theirs can also
enjoy this same gift of life? Even with the seeming positive outcomes of
COP 24 in Katowice, we know we’ll need to do the impossible within
the next ten to fifteen years! As we know, our dear planet is not in the
best of shape.

Discovery Map Sharing Evening

We are in the home stretch now, getting ready for our session on Monday, January 21st
between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm. Please try coming around 4:30 pm to help set up the tables
and put the brown paper on the glass wall in front of the auditorium classrooms (we are using
the open space outside these rooms). And please bring a bite to eat, as we’ll be working
through the dinner period. I am starting a little earlier so that perhaps some of you with
German lessons can be with us for a bit of the evening.

I’ve been happy to review some of your Discovery Maps and would welcome it if the other
RefComs were to share their maps by the 10th of January. I am more than happy to give a little
feedback.

In our session on the 21st, you’ll be moving among and between your RefComs, sharing the
insights of your Discovery Maps. We will also be looking for significant interconnections
between these Maps that we will capture on the large and long sheet of brown paper. In
essence, you’ll be co-creating your own “systems dynamics” map of the positive and
negative feedback loops between the various themes – i.e., putting your learnings from Prof.
Biber into practice.

Please send your Discovery Map in the PDF format to Vera Knill and Tizian Muellritter and
me by Jan. 10th. This will give us time to make hard copies, hopefully in A2 size. Please be
sure to include the following information on your Maps, perhaps in the lower right corner:
TUM-SRM RevCom ?, Data, and your full names.

 Here are Vera, Tizian & my emails: tizian@muellritter.de; vera.knill@tum.de;

charles.savage@kee-inc.com

I’ve put four topics at the end of this note for your “Reflective Paper” due Jan. 28th.

Here are two pictures from last year’s Discovery Map session:

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As I mentioned, we invite our faculty, graduates of our program and others in the Munich area
with a keen interest in our efforts. If you have suggestions for someone we should invite,
please let me know right away. Thanks

Reflections on the Challenges Ahead

It was fifty years ago, this past December 24th that the Apollo 8 Astronauts, in circling the
moon, first saw our blue planet in this truly unique manner. Thanks to the birth of the
environmental movement, we have come to realize both the uniqueness of our presence on
Earth AND the fragility of the opportunity.
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As you finish up your Discovery Maps, might you realize you are not just “solving a current
problem,” but building a “shared and inspiring vision” for many centuries to come (perhaps
the next 500 to 800 million years)?

Moreover, as you work within your Reflective Communities, might you bring out the very
best in one another, building upon each other’s energy and visions. In this way, we can
awaken the “Aliveness” factor in us all.

As I have again looked at this amazing photo above, I’ve added the six comments beside it
and have developed these questions to, perhaps, help us understand the uniqueness of the
moment [please pick one of these for the second topic on your Reflective Paper]:

1. Are we simply passengers on our planet, expecting to harvest the resources that
nature has stored up for us, or do we understand ourselves as co-participants in a
cosmic process of establishing harmony and lifefulness in the universe?
2. Are we, as individuals, just focusing on our own self-interests, or might we find life’s
richness in an active interest-in-one-another, one another’s culture and one another’s
future?
3. Our five senses put us in the middle of a world of OBJECTS within the present. Yet
is that all? Could it be that we live in “Life’s FIELD” (like the electromagnetic field)
where we can sense the significant beyond our five senses and where the wisdom of
the past, the challenges of the present, and opportunities of the future are co-present?
Is this not why the study of Systems Dynamics helps us understand the multi-level
dynamics that are not obvious at first?
4. Is our challenge only to “fix” what is broken, or is to co-create new and energizing
possibilities?
5. Our Industrial Era educational model has focused on teachings “about” and “how-to-
do,” so we are SMART and can fit into the machinery of industry like cogs-in-a-
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 gear. Yet, do we not have emotions, values, questions, memory, and vision,
tempered with humility and curiosity? Could it be that we’ll not find the “harmony”
as “participants” in “life’s field” unless we rediscover our collective WISDOM?
[And might we, during our session on the 21st of January begin to understand the
dynamics of “Wiseful Learning.” The efforts of RefCom M may help us all in this
regard. Interestingly enough, I did a search of the IISD’s concluding document on
COP 24 and did not find the words “wise” or “wisdom” mentioned even once. What
does this tell us?]

This last point came home, and in spades, as I read the first question of a hundred question
survey in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Dec. 30th:

Is Artificial Intelligence really reminding us of our “Natural Stupidity?” Perhaps!

Perhaps things have not really changed much in the past 3,000 years or so, as I remembered
the following thought:

“Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wise

In their own esteem, these deluded men
Proud of their vain learning go round and round
Like the blind led by the blind.”
Katha Upanishad, Section 1, Part 2, Verse 5 & 6

Is the “recognizing of collective ignorance” necessary if we are to have the humility to ask
about things we never considered before? I suspect many of you are experiencing this in the
“chemistry of your conversations” in your Reflective Communities. Could this be one of the
first steps in moving beyond an almost blind dependency to our five senses and the
arrogance of thinking we are SMART? Honestly, I find “recognizing my own ignorance” a
most liberating insight.

Remember, the Artificial Intelligence concept only dates from a conference in 1955 at
Dartmouth College. Just as the gear was the symbol of the Industrial Era, so AI (in this
form) has become the dominating metaphor in the fast-emerging Digital Era.

What if AI were also to refer to our own Authentic Intuition, our ability to sense and
share (beyond our five senses) with one another the wise insights of the past, the challenges
of the present and the possible visions of the future (i.e., made more visible by Systems
Dynamics insights)? Perhaps you all are already be using your Authentic Intuition in the
preparing of your Discovery Maps? I suspect so, even if we’ve not put this in words.

I’ve just realized that we are often captive to “word prison.” Some of the words we use daily
are hollow and lifeless. My guess is that we’ll need to renew and innovate on our
languages, so we can think, discuss, reflect and act in ways that make living “lightly, lively
and wisely” possible again! Please help us invent, innovate and refine a language that brings
back into focus life’s inner dynamics. And please look for rich words in the many languages
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represented in our class, as often we can often say something important in one language, but
not in another.

Topics for the Reflective Paper

Please use about a half a page for each of these four questions (please keep the paper to no
more than two pages). In the spirit of our efforts to help deepen our shared reflections, I’d
welcome your discussing your short reflective papers with at least two of your colleagues,
putting their names at the end. And you might start making some working notes for yourself
in the next week or two, so it is not a last minute effort.

1. What new insights have you gained about yourself and one another in working within
your Reflective Communities and the sharing of your efforts on the 21st? [For
example, do you have a better sense of the richness of our inner abilities such as:
valuing, feeling, thinking, intuiting, remembering, anticipating, inferring, envisioning,
asking, wondering and imagining together with curiosity and sometimes even
skepticism?]

2. Please pick one of the five points listed under the graphic of our planet (above) and
share your thoughts on this topic.

3. How might we co-create a new language where our “Authentic Intuition” helps us to
co-create a breakthrough society/culture/economy where we can “live lightly, lively
and wisely?” [Remember the painting of Gustav Klimt in which he helps Sonia Knips
discover her truer self? Were you to “paint” such a picture in words and pictures and
hang it in the living room of the world, what might be possible?]

4. Which are the six most important URLs that you follow to stay current around
sustainability and climate change issues? Are there key persons in your own country
or NGOs which you follow through URLs? Which do you use to identify the
challenging patterns that need addressing? Please share your list with a brief sentence
for each. And with your permission, might we add these to our shared URL list?
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 Please indicate this permission in your paper. Thanks. [Are there two persons who
would like to help in this effort of putting together a really good composite list?]

Very Important, when sending me your Reflective Paper on the 28th, please use the
following file name: Last Name, First Name – Reflective Paper

I am enclosing a working list of URLs that might help both with your Discovery Map efforts
and your own personal selection of six URLs. I’ve shared this with you already, but I have
been adding to it. It would be wonderful if we could grow this list with your additional
suggestions, as an ongoing resource for you all. [I really welcome URLs that have not yet
made it to this list.]

Again, as I’ve said in the class, we are working not in a competitive environment, but
collaboratively. Moreover, the grade (in this case Pass/Fail based on your RefCom
participation and the Reflective Paper) is less important than the actual Wiseful Learning that
you weave together during our short course. This is why I welcome your actively discussing
your Reflective paper with your colleagues before you send it to me on the 28th, as this will
benefit all.

Thanks for being such a wonderful and co-creative class and the hard work you are doing on
your Discovery Maps. I very much look forward to seeing and learning from you Maps, and
most especially our session on January 21st.

If you cannot be with us (in part or all the time), please let me know well ahead of time.

Again, might 2019 begin the big and necessary BREAKTHROUGH process our dear planet
so badly? Please know it is counting on us all!

If you have thoughts or questions, please come back to me.

All the best for our challenges ahead,

Dr. Charles

PS – See you on Monday, the 21st at 4:30 pm in front of the auditorium rooms.