Interconnectedness

See how you resonate with these 16 ideas from systems theorist Ervin László that describe Deep Awareness of the Unity and Interconnectedness of Everything…

1. I am part of the world. The world is not outside of me, and I am not outside of the world. The world is in me, and I am in the world.
2. I am part of nature, and nature is part of me. I am what I am in my communication and communion with all living things. I am an irreducible and coherent whole with the web of life on the planet.
3. I am part of society, and society is part of me. I am what I am in my communication and communion with my fellow humans. I am an irreducible and coherent whole with the community of humans on the planet.
4. I am more than a skin-and-bone material organism: my body, and its cells and organs are manifestations of what is truly me: a self-sustaining, self-evolving dynamic system arising, persisting and evolving in interaction with everything around me.
5. I am [an] evolved manifestation of the drive toward coherence and wholeness in the universe. It is the same essence, the same spirit that is inherent in all the things that arise and evolve in nature, whether on this planet or elsewhere in the infinite reaches of space and time.
6. There are no absolute boundaries and divisions in this world, only transition points where one set of relations yields prevalence to another. In me, in this self-maintaining and self-evolving coherence- and wholeness-oriented system, the relations that integrate the cells and organs of my body are prevalent.
7. The separate identity I attach to other humans and other things is but a convenient convention that facilitates my interaction with them. My family and my community are just as much “me” as the organs of my body. My body and mind, my family and my community, are interacting and interpenetrating, variously prevalent elements in the network of relations that encompasses all things in nature and the human world.
8. The whole gamut of concepts and ideas that separates my identity, or the identity of any person or community, from the identity of other persons and communities are manifestations of this convenient but arbitrary convention. There are no “others” in the world: We are all living systems and we are all part of each other.
9. Attempting to maintain the system I know as “me” through ruthless competition with the system I know as “you” is a grave mistake: It could damage the integrity of the embracing whole that frames both your life and mine. I cannot preserve my own life and wholeness by damaging that whole, even if damaging a part of it seems to bring me short-term advantage. When I harm you, or anyone else around me, I harm myself.
10. Collaboration, not competition, is the royal road to the wholeness that hallmarks healthy systems in the world. Collaboration calls for empathy and solidarity, and ultimately for love. We are part of the same whole and so are part of each other.
11. The idea of “self-defense,” even of “national defense,” needs to be rethought. Patriotism if it aims to eliminate adversaries by force, and heroism even in the well-meaning execution of that aim, are mistaken aspirations. Comprehension, conciliation and forgiveness are not signs of weakness; they are signs of courage.
12. “The good” for me and for every person in the world is not the possession and accumulation of personal wealth. Wealth, in money or in any material resource, is but a means for maintaining myself in my environment. Exclusive wealth is a threat to all people in the human community.
13. Beyond the sacred whole we recognize as the world in its totality, only life and its development have what philosophers call intrinsic value; all other things have merely instrumental value: value insofar as they add to or enhance intrinsic value. Material things in the world, and the energies and substances they harbor or generate, have value only if and insofar they contribute to life and well-being in the web of life on this Earth.
14. The true measure of my accomplishment and excellence is my readiness to give. Not the amount of what I give is the measure of my accomplishment and excellence, but the relation between what I give, and what my family and I need to live and to thrive.
15. Every healthy person has pleasure in giving: It is a higher pleasure than having. I am healthy and whole when I value giving over having. Sharing enhances the community of life, while possessing and accumulating creates demarcation, invites competition, and fuels envy. The share-society is the norm for all the communities of life on the planet; the have-society is typical only of modern-day humanity, and it is an aberration.
16. I recognize the aberration of modern-day humanity from the universal norm of coherence in the world, acknowledge my role in having perpetrated it, and pledge my commitment to restoring wholeness and coherence by becoming whole myself: whole in my thinking and acting — in my consciousness.

If you had an “aha experience” while reading even just one of these ideas, you have the foundations of Unity consciousness. And if you had this experience all the way through, you already possess this crucial consciousness.

~Ervin László~

Akasha Think
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ervin-laszlo/akasha-think_b_1654078.html

Here is a list of key systems theorists across different fields, including general systems theory, cybernetics, ecology, sociology, and complexity science:

Foundational Systems Theorists

Ecological and Sustainability Systems Theorists

Complexity and Chaos Theorists

Sociological and Political Systems Theorists

Foundational Systems Theorists

1. Ludwig von Bertalanffy – Founder of General Systems Theory (GST), emphasized open systems and holistic thinking.

2. Norbert Wiener – Developed Cybernetics, focusing on feedback loops and self-regulation in systems.

3. Ross Ashby – Introduced concepts like the Law of Requisite Variety in cybernetics.

4. Jay Forrester – Created System Dynamics, applied in modeling complex social and ecological systems.

5. Stafford Beer – Developed Management Cybernetics and the Viable System Model (VSM) for organizational structure.

6. Gregory Bateson – Applied systems thinking to psychology, anthropology, and communication theory.

7. Niklas Luhmann – Developed Social Systems Theory, viewing society as self-organizing communication networks.

8. Ilya Prigogine – Studied dissipative structures, explaining how systems evolve through instability.

9. Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela – Introduced autopoiesis, describing how living systems self-organize and maintain themselves.

10. Heinz von Foerster – Worked on second-order cybernetics, emphasizing the observer’s role in systems.

11. Kenneth E. Boulding – Applied systems thinking to economics and social sciences.

12. Anatol Rapoport – Contributed to game theory, conflict resolution, and general systems theory.

Ecological and Sustainability Systems Theorists

13. James Lovelock – Proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, viewing Earth as a self-regulating system.

14. Fritjof Capra – Integrated systems thinking with sustainability and deep ecology.

15. Donella Meadows – Lead author of Limits to Growth, focused on sustainability and leverage points in systems.

16. Howard T. Odum – Pioneer of ecological energetics and systems ecology.

17. C.S. Holling – Developed Resilience Theory, explaining how ecosystems adapt to change.

Complexity and Chaos Theorists

18. John H. Holland – Studied complex adaptive systems and emergence in biological and social systems.

19. Stuart Kauffman – Explored self-organization and evolutionary complexity.

20. Murray Gell-Mann – Co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute, studied complex systems.

21. Edward Lorenz – Developed Chaos Theory, introducing the Butterfly Effect.

22. Ilya Prigogine & Isabelle Stengers – Worked on non-equilibrium thermodynamics, explaining complexity in nature.

Sociological and Political Systems Theorists

23. Talcott Parsons – Developed Structural Functionalism, viewing society as an interdependent system.

24. Émile Durkheim – Early Functionalist Theory, focused on social cohesion and division of labor.

25. Jürgen Habermas – Explored systems in relation to communication, power, and democracy.

26. Pierre Bourdieu – Studied how social fields function as structured systems.

27. Immanuel Wallerstein – Developed World-Systems Theory, analyzing global economic and political networks.

28. Bruno Latour – Co-founded Actor-Network Theory (ANT), integrating human and non-human actors in systems.

29. Anthony Giddens – Developed Structuration Theory, integrating agency and structure.

Cybernetics & Organizational Systems Theorists

30. Stafford Beer – Pioneer of cybernetics in management, developed the Viable System Model (VSM).

31. Peter Senge – Developed Learning Organizations, author of The Fifth Discipline.

32. Russell L. Ackoff – Developed Interactive Planning, a systems-based approach to organizational design.

33. Karl Weick – Known for Sensemaking in Organizations, studied loosely coupled systems.

34. Jay Forrester – Applied systems thinking to industrial and urban modeling.

35. Henry Mintzberg – Studied organizational structures and emergent strategy.

Economic and World Systems Theorists

36. Karl Marx – Developed an early dialectical systems approach to socio-economic structures.

37. Joseph Schumpeter – Introduced Creative Destruction, analyzing economic evolution.

38. W. Edwards Deming – Applied systems thinking to quality management.

39. Friedrich Hayek – Studied self-organizing markets and spontaneous order.

This list includes core systems theorists across multiple disciplines.