Margaret Wheately\u2019s Leadership and the New Science proved to be a challenging read.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With her understanding of quantum science, she presents an alternative view, for leadership and organizational life, so to speak, to the currently practiced model patterned after Newtonian laws. \u00a0\u00a0I began to wonder, whether her \u2018leadership alternative\u2019 is in fact a new understanding or if it was simply a re-tracing of steps back to the original foundations of how life was intended to be lived and perhaps as it was understood before science replaced religion as a cultural driving force.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
The concepts and principles of quantum physics of wholeness, inherent interconnectedness, the self \u2013 organizing nature of living systems, the order in chaos, the understanding of open systems and most importantly, the fact that reality is not just mechanical but has room for human activity and consciousness\u00a0 have all been the essence of Indian philosophy since time immemorial.\u00a0\u00a0 Until recent times, for an Indian, life, work, culture and traditions have always been organized around this philosophical understanding undergirded by religion.<\/p>\n
However with the impact of globalization and westernization, the East is now gravitating towards a mechanistic Newtonian model of life where individuals the individual \u2018parts\u2019 are taking precedence to the \u2018whole\u2019 and where religious beliefs are taking a back seat.\u00a0 The resulting society in the East, in my view, is in a state of chaotic transition.\u00a0 \u00a0In the instance of socio-cultural identity, globalization has left the urban population in a cultural quandary of being neither Indian nor Western.\u00a0 The individual likes his or her dosa, chutney and sambar (South Indian cuisineJ<\/span>) but wants to eat it with a fork and knife.\u00a0 A hilarious sight to behold!\u00a0 But not so, when the individual conducts his or her life in much the same way when it comes to issues concerning family, marriage and religion.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Increasingly the urban Indian is becoming increasingly individualistic in his or her outlook.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Middle class families are transitioning away from the joint \u2013 family system to a nucleus unit, from traditionally family arranged marriages to marriages of choice (which also means inter-religious marriages), from pre-marital and extra-marital relationships being taboo (except within marriages) to now as a \u2018social necessity\u2019 (that\u2019s what one young person recently shared with me) to be enjoyed safely.\u00a0 \u00a0These changes have created shifts in thinking and ethics breeding a pseudo-culture.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The average urban Indian middle class family now agrees without hesitation that employing western methods and tools to operate an Indian life is in fact progress.\u00a0 \u00a0Rural India too is experiencing such a disorder where different patterns of living are emerging.\u00a0<\/p>\n In this state of \u201cdisequilibrium\u201d, with transition, and chaos, it is important to consider the role of the church?\u00a0 Will the church become swallowed up as just another part of the whole? Or will the \u201cEcclesia\u201d be the \u201csingular and small influence\u201d (location 1442) creating the change as it should? \u00a0\u00a0Wheately writes: \u201cWhen the system is far from equilibrium, singular or small influences can have enormous impact.\u00a0\u00a0 It is not the law of large number or critical mass that creates change, but the presence of a small disturbance that gets in to the system and then is amplified through the networks.\u00a0 Once inside the network, this small disturbance circulates and feeds back on itself.\u00a0\u00a0 As different parts of the system get hold of it, interpret it and change it the disturbance grows.\u00a0 Finally, it becomes so amplified that it cannot be ignored\u201d (location 1442).\u00a0\u00a0 She further states that these \u201csmall disturbances\u201d when amplified destabilize the system creating a new normal.\u00a0\u00a0 The rapidly growing Indigenous church in India faces this challenge today.\u00a0\u00a0 It is my belief that it is \u201ccalled out\u201d to be the driving force contributing to the development of the critical elements of the self \u2013 organizing system; \u201cidentity and freedom\u201d, as it was originally intended.<\/p>\n Reference:<\/span><\/p>\n Wheatley, Margaret J..\u00a0<\/span>Leadership and the new science: discovering order in a chaotic world<\/em>. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1999.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Margaret Wheately\u2019s Leadership and the New Science proved to be a challenging read.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With her understanding of quantum science, she presents an alternative view, for leadership and organizational life, so to speak, to the currently practiced model patterned after Newtonian laws. \u00a0\u00a0I began to wonder, whether her \u2018leadership alternative\u2019 is in fact a new understanding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,344],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-wheately","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}