Imagine

I'm a huge fan of systems thinking. Those who look at life through a systemic lens view families and organizations as complex organic spiderwebs, everyone having a part to play-sometimes acting, sometimes reacting. Over the past 30 or so years, psychologists and organizational development mavens have applied this analytical perspective therapeutically, to help families heal, and organizationally, to create healthier, more effective companies, congregations and schools. One of the things a systems lens does is to help people stop focussing on who is "right" and who is "wrong." That is helpful both in the family and in the workplace: no longer can the sole blame for dysfunction be placed on Dad, with his nagging, or Debbie, the bosses' secretary. When you look at a system, you realize that everybody in it needs to take responsibility for his or her own behavior-if one part of the body displays health, others may follow (or they might eat the healthy person for lunch-but isn't it better to go down in a good cause?) What if we applied this point of view to the Israeli-Arab wars? What if we, outside the Middle East, refused to tolerate the breast-beating and posturing and insane desire to play the victim that goes on -on both sides? What if we didn't indulge in this kind of behavior ourselves? Imagine- How wonderful it would be if Republicans and Democrats in Congress could realize that they need to suppress their groupthink reflex because they serve the American people and not their particular parochial viewpoint. Politicians who serve the people...man, what a concept!