Interesting research upon the question “why are so many working on solving problems, but nobody on solving their root causes?”
This question was raised by Eugen Oetringer on LinkedIn. The question received thousands of views and many people responded with their particular remarks. Eugen made “yellow online post-its” of each of the remarks and subsequently tried to group them into comprehensive labeled buckets that could be seen as root causes of the impedements to address the issues at hand.
When he presented his analysis in the weekly School of Talents & Wellness online encounter I noted the possible bias in the interpretation caused by the way Eugen tends to structure his personal line of thinking. I wondered if someone else would come to the same or another interpretation, based on the same input? Eugen took on this challenge and I myself got motivated to do the exercize.
Indeed a totally different outcome was reveiled, one that surprised Eugen to such an extend that we decided to ask a few different people, with different backgrounds, to do the same.
The question and the list of responses was the same for Eugen and me. The grouping of the responses into buckets and the naming of these buckets is something subjective for both:
- Eugen: Fear, Missing common good (common responsibility and own interests first), Our metrics incentivize symptom fixing, Lack of Training or thinking in terms of Root causes.
- Jean-Paul: Fear, Laziness (uncertainty), Interests and Need for Professional Leadership
Now we are waiting for other people to do the same. What would be the reason (personal root causes?) of the differences in interpretation by Eugen and myself? What can we objectively or intersubjectively learn from this? At least we are now looking at a doubled interpretation, ready for a broader dialogue. On the other hand, does it bring us closer to addressing the original root causes as asked in the poll at the first place? Or have we only introduced more? If we can pinpoint root causes, who would we consider the ones to deal with them?
Another possible viewpoint is that “if we address the common root causes of our current institution or even society as a whole the entire society system may collapse”. This would mean that the root causes are original system design faults, inherent of the system. If we want to solve them we have to disgard the system entirely and build a new one based on different values and interrelations. We apply our knowledge of the past but do not attempt to repair, we reposition. This is in fact what we do with Sustainocracy. Many elements of the old system are still valid, also in the context of Sustainocracy, but with a difference. In Sustainocracy the objectives, with individual and shared responsibilities, are different, directly related to the human biological reality, resilience and sustainable progress.
Why them don’t enough people or institutions join Sustainocracy? Only partly the listed arguments remain valid, maybe 30 to 40%. In particular the lack of leadership is a mayor drawback. But more importantly is the blindness, the unawareness, the lack of openness to new options. This is a remark that Eugen also included in his analysis: the bias and inability to see things differently. This is not something we can teach, it needs time, our determination and our own leadership to expand with those that do.
Work in progress, will be continued……
Success in developing the common good through our global learning cooperation
Below a message that we received today from our educational coördinator Yunus Ersoy in Turkey. This message is related to 7 years of receiving groups of students of many different schools from Turkey in our School of Talents & Wellness cooperative initiative within the Sustainocratic mindset developent. We worked together through the European Erasmus+ exchange program.
Thank you from Turkey. We appreciate your ideas and support on this long journey. The epidemic process has stopped physical movements. We hope good days are near. Today, many of our schools have received the support of Jean-Paul conceptually. In addition to their professional experience, our students (vocational high school students) have done a lot of work on how they can contribute to the ecosystem. With the trainings we received in the Netherlands today, workshops and social responsibility clubs were established in our country. Our students work to mobilize all citizens with their professional experiences in workshops and social responsibility clubs. Most importantly, they implemented it in a team spirit. With the end of the COVID19 process, we will now invite you, our valuable experts from abroad, to our country. Our goal is for you to see our work on site and visit our schools and workshops.
“You only learn to swim when in deep water”. This is also the case when looking at developing the core human values (common good cocreation) of Sustainocracy through our participatory learning efforts in the worldwide School of Talent and Wellness community. Such words of engagement, follow up and commitment are heartwarming and a clear message to educational institutes of other countries to join our cooperative in the School of Talent and Wellness. We help the students, schools and universities to swim in the deep waters of a new mindset of serving their own wellness by serving that of humankind and our planet.
What is cocreation?
This question is often raised when people get acquainted with or involved into Sustainocracy. It is a logical question when one comes from a society where fragmented interests rule. The closest we tend to come to cocreation in our daily life is as a family (father, mother, children). In this video I try to explain what is means in the context of Sustainocracy.
Sustainocracy, the new democracy 