Two responses to this Po:  "The people's understanding of our collective global situation is already far ahead of current institutions, their leaders, and communities of professional practice."

From Frank Voehl:

• Consequences: The people would no longer need the structure of the current institutions, thereby freeing up the leaders to do 'other things'. The consequences would possibly lead to a promotion of self-organizing systems, where individually and collectively the people would embrace change or fight it. In other words, they can operate as a 'closed system' or an 'open system.'
• Benefits: 'Open systems' have the ability to re-configure themselves to absorb and deal quickly and effectively with new information. As new information pours in, everything is open and subject to change. At some point, this information becomes so amplified that the system reaches maximum instability (conflicting forces). The result is often a system that encounters a future that is wide open and where no one can predict which evolutionary path it will take (Wheatly).
• Circumstances: Choosing the closed system route would have serious implications considering how closed systems eventually meet their demise. Creating permeable boundaries will allow for a free-flow and exchange of energy and information which, although threatening at time s, will provide aasystems that evolve to greater interdependence and resiliency because they maintain a coherent identity throughout their history and provide the freedom to grow and evolve. The people's understanding is goverened by one general rule: The system must remain consistent with itself. The presence of this guiding rule allows for both creativity and boundaries, for evolution and coherence, for self-determination and free will.

From Kent Myers:

• The people understood, but when it came time to act, persuasive members said that is all very well, but what people needed now was something "practical" and "real."  So they did a fantastic job of promoting flourescent bulbs. The significant effort to install these bulbs ended up retarding by years the market for much superior LEDs, and it crowded more important items off the agenda.
• Another item on the people's agenda met with great success.  Activists were able to block the construction of power lines (in an alliance of convenience with NIMBYs).  This was designed to force conservation, which it did, marginally lowering the expected growth in power consumption.   But it also ended up raising power costs, supressed sales of electric vehicles, extended markets for conventional cars and petroleum, and accelerated building of close-in coal power plants (since distant wind and solar plants were no longer competitive without improved transport). 
• The people were able to pressure politicians to take specific actions that had been identified as "gaps".  These were duly addressed by reallocating funds from projects that were aguably more beneficial though less flashy.
• Highly educated, highly placed professionals in the community were pleased to see the people accomplishing so much.  For their part in the effort, they wrote checks to send to the activists so that they could do more to make life miserable for evil politicians.  They also joined crews of children on the weekend to pick up trash, "to help the environment."   At work, they continued to do exactly and only what they were paid for.  They pushed through billion dollar projects that, collectively, were remaking the technical and social environment at a great rate, all at the lowest possible standard with the highest possible short-term financial gain to owners. 

Complex Practice Project News ==========

Tom Cuddy, our Environment chapter author, attended the official debut on Capitol Hill of Gary Hart's Presidential Climate Action Project. http://www.climateactionproject.com/   Tom was laughing about how nicely this fit the pattern of complex practice that we have been describing.  He was also impressed with how aware Hart's team was of this different way of doing business. (Self-awareness is part of the concept.)  Seminars on Capitol Hill are designed to draw out Congressional staffers – to educate and engage professional practitioners.  Few showed up, however.