The contribution of west churchman to sustainable governance and international relations

Abstract

This book provides many conceptual tools that can enhance our ability to design inquiring systems that are more mindful and more conscious of both our rights and responsibilities to humanity and to all sentient beings. At a certain point life becomes self-aware. As conscious caretakers we have a role of achieving balance between the freedoms of individuals and the need for collective responsibility for social and environmental justice that uses consciousness to address sustainability. In this collected works and in the volumes that follow, we explore the implications of Churchman's (and other related) ideas for better governance, risk management and systemic accountability by exploring the boundaries of our thinking and asking questions. The purpose of this volume is to argue that ideally a revised enlightenment and democracy needs to be seen not so much as a static universal law, but as a dynamic structure and process for balancing the eternal paradox that: On the one hand: openness to debate and to other ideas and possibilities is the basis for both the ideal form of revised enlightenment process of testing and for ideal forms of democracy and On the other hand, for openness to occur there has to be some trust that voicing new ideas will not lead to subtle or overt marginalisation of oneself or one's associates. The West and the East face the challenge of preserving this openness and trust and redressing the imbalances in wealth and power caused by centuries of brutal colonization, modernization and globalization that is largely based on the single bottom line (see Elkington's 1997 critique) of profits in competitive markets, that support hegemony, rather than on a multiple dynamic awareness of socio-cultural, political, economic and environmental factors that (when considered together) support a sustainable future. Philosophy and communication to span the divides across Foundationalism, non-Foundationalism and anti-Foundationalism (Romm 2004, pers. comm., Romm, 2001a, b, 2002) is needed as a means to share thinking and to co-create responses. Communication based on respect (in the sense explored by Derrida and Habermas, 2003) is perhaps more important than ever as the basis for governance, international relations, peace studies and socio-environmental policy. The paradox, namely that openness and sharing ideas (the idealist version of democracy and a transformed Enlightenment approach) requires trust. Trust in turn requires openness and sharing ideas. The leap of faith required to address this paradox and to develop resonance and trust through respectful communication is where spirituality, religions and the sciences touch fingers across the divide across subjective, objective and intersubjective experiences of the world. In 1971 Churchman wrote The Design of Inquiring Systems and developed tools for theoretical and methodological literacy. The five basic systems are as follows. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.