Recognizing the Recipe for Failure of Future National and International Efforts to Reform
by Edwin L. Young, PhD
February 23, 2010

All of the parts of a nation’s system are interconnected and self-perpetuating.  No part of a nation’s encompassing system can exist without the others.  The system will fail unless each part facilitates the complete interconnected system.  Consequently, attempting to change any one part, exclusive of accompanying changes in all of the others that are compatible with an overarching change oriented goal, will ultimately fail. 

Any enduring, effective change to any of the nation’s governmental and non-governmental institutions and organizations must entail a comprehensive plan and strategy of implementation that includes all simultaneously. 

If a significant change is made in only one part, in time and as a result of its interconnectedness with all other parts, the rest of the system will eventually force the altered part to return to the status quo ante. 

Nations that have tried, consciously or unwittingly, altering one part of their comprehensive system have ended with disruptive and even disastrous consequences for all.

This principle attempts to institute changes within a nation extraordinary complex and difficult.  Of course, the alternative is ultimate failure of such attempts.  These complexities and difficulties in making changes within a nation pale in comparison with considerations of change within the contemporary context of the vast interconnectedness of the global system.  Unfortunately, the world’s leaders have no other choice than to undertake the development of a comprehensive global plan and strategy for change. 

The reason why the world’s leaders must do this is because the systems that governments have inherited from the countless millennia, virtually the entire history of homo sapiens, notwithstanding our glorious accomplishments, have set the world’s populations on an inevitable path toward vast planetary destruction and ultimately extinction of our species.

From the worldwide reservoir of intelligent minds, every nation must enlist their best to address this challenge.  The world’s political leaders must condescend to engage in integral cooperation with the world’s non-political intelligentsia in order to meet this crucial challenge.

Obviously, I do not have the knowledge or power to provide the necessary solutions to this challenge.  I simply hope that someone will grasp the urgency of meeting this challenge and begin to take the initiative to get others to do so as well.  On the pressing issues confronting the future of earth, responsible and knowledgeable political leaders diplomatically can suggest that their colleagues may have expertise that should help in dealing with this challenge from a systems perspective.  Nor can those without official status afford the luxury of apathy and un-involvement but rather must exert their effort through whatever avenue is available to them.