THIRD PRINCIPLE OF A DECEPTION-PERCEPTION APPROACH TO SYSTEMS

3. There are no experts in the systems approach.

The public always knows more than any expert. The problem of the systems approach is to learn what "everybody" knows. "At the same time, the real expert is still Everyman, stupid, humorous, serious, and comprehensive all at the same time." (TSA 231-232).

SH: Indeed, I have become convinced that most people are much more systems thinkers than they know they are, and they even know that what they have as systemic insights is important to them, and that they would even like to act on them. (I think I am myself a case in point, but I know many others that are, too.) This means that there is an immense reservoir of systemic knowledge and action readiness waiting to get out and change the world for the better. The trouble is that people are not aware that these insights are systemic (nobody even seems to know what systems thinking is) and that there are frameworks or methods or approaches to get much more complete systemic insight into what interests/troubles them, and that these approaches work best if they combine the insights of others, whether real or imagined, dead (Churchman's philosophers) or alive.