Posts Tagged

systems theory

I Hate COPS Because I Love COPS

“As an occupation, policing necessarily involves people in a violent institution, demands they forfeit their freedom to a hierarchical chain of command and constraints imposed by their oath of office, and asks them to participate in an idolatrous view of the nation-state as the place where God’s action in history is primarily to be experienced…

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Losing Oneself: Brief Reflections on Identity, Roles, and Alienation

“Although the social structures in the contemporary world are less rigid than in ancient cultures, there are still many pre-established functions or roles that people readily identify with and which thus become part of the ego. This causes human interactions to become inauthentic, dehumanized, alienating. Those pre-established roles may give you a somewhat comforting sense…

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Pathology is the shadow of the incomplete: Steve McIntosh on Progress and Pathology in Cultural Evolution

“Well first of all, there is present in the structural pattern in the development of human consciousness and culture what we might describe as the dialectic of “progress and pathology”…for every new set of advances, for every new worldview stage that emerges beyond what came before, we find that there is pathology, or problems, or …

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How to Love Your Enemies and Still Hate On Bad Ideas: Systems Thinking, Principalities and Powers, and “Hot Button Topics”

“Nothing endures but change” –Heraclitus Throughout my life I have encountered people who think differently than me; people  who have different beliefs, ideas, convictions, and ideologies than me. This is inevitable. But what I’ve found to be most problematic about engaging with someone who has a differing opinion, stance, viewpoint or idea on something is…

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