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‘Among’... not ‘At the Centre Of’
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Being, or seeing, or thinking ‘among’ is an overarching or underpinning theme for [almost] everything we publish  - it has to do with context and perspective. This attention to 'being among' is one definition of Systems Thinking - whether it's:
See also The Universe as a Living Whole: Whole Systems Thinking and Process Theology - Jay McDaniel's masterful integration of these two approaches using the work of Daniel Wahl as its centrepiece.

It starts with Sandra Reeve saying that ecological movement means seeing ourselves as being among not at the centre of things. This viewpoint, she says, helps to lessen my attachment to the idea that I, or my job, or my health, or my family, or my nation, or my gender, or my colour, or my species matters more than any other. Sandra says "As an ecological body engaged in ecological movement, I am aware of the effect that my movement is having on others and on the environment itself, and how they condition my movement".

This connects to...

...Nora Bateson describing Symmathesy - the process of contextual mutual learning through interaction over time - as the defining characteristic of all living systems. "Everything is always learning from everything else", she says. She goes on, "Learning in symmathesy is the perpetual processes of positioning and repositioning, calibrating, shifting, and responding to responses within contexts of multiple, simultaneous interactions". 

This connects to...
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...Bill Tate  asserting that it's not individual leaders (fish) but the whole organisational environment (the water they swim in) that create and constitute leadership. Bill proposes a systemic view of leadership, where the leadership role is one factor in an intricate system of interacting elements that affect how leadership is best applied in organisation settings and how it can be improved. The model challenges conventional approaches to the definition of leadership, as well as the way leadership is studied, how it is assessed and developed.

This connects to...

...Barry Oshry showing us that the single biggest failing of all organisations and the people in them is context-blindness. Barry reminds us that all organisations, in fact all human systems, are organic entities engaging with ever-changing environments. In these environments, there are dangers to be avoided and opportunities to be taken advantage of. The fundamental business of all such systems is to survive in their environments and, if possible, thrive by successfully coping with dangers and prospecting among opportunities. 

This connects to...
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...John Seddon saying that command-and-control managers like to buy change via training and projects, unaware that change requires that we first change the system. John says, "To take a systems view is to think about the organisation from the outside-in, to understand customer demand and to design a system that meets it. To enable control in this high variety environment, it is necessary to integrate decision-making with work (so the workers control the work) and use measures derived from the work."

This connects to...
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...Rosalind Armson who writes in beautiful detail about how we can apply Systems Thinking in our daily lives. Writing about epistemic awareness she says: "As humans we each find ourselves with a unique perspective – one that no-one else shares... But we also have to accept that our viewpoint is only ever a ‘view from here’ or even a ‘view from inside here’. I have no direct access to a reality that is independent of my way of looking at things. And this is true however much I set my own desires and interests to one side in an attempt to be objective."

This connects to...

...Phil Smith who describes mythogeography as a way or recognising the multiple levels at which we experience the world around us. He reminds us that, in any particular place like a city street or a castle or a theme park or a school or a derelict industrial site, we may prioritise (or the site's 'owners' may prioritise for us) history or safety or architecture or natural beauty or shopping and consumption or efficiency or entertainment. In the process we tend to shut out the other multiple levels and perspectives through which we are already experiencing the place."

This connects to...

...Bill Sharpe who urges us to reverse our habit of seeing a world of stable things to which change happens, where we tend to imagine that creativity is an occasional accomplishment of ours. "

We need" he says "to do a figure-ground reversal to view the world as continuously producing newness, within which we create patterns of relative stability." 
 
This connects to...

...Julian Wolfreys who points out how often the state of Being is confused with a sense of Belonging. As humans, he observes that we very quickly seek to identify ourselves with a place, a language, a group of other human beings, a religious belief, a political ideology or a football team.  As soon as there is a sense belonging, then there comes with it a fear of loss, concern with inclusion, anxiety over exclusion, and a perpetual condition of crisis. This is the case, whether we are talking of the self, a nation, an idea of a community.

This connects to...

...Jean Russell who characterises Breakdown Thinking as a pessimistic, unskilled, individualistic, competitive, egocentric approach to crisis, where Thrivability is a co-operative, imaginative, creative, collaborative approach that leads to hope and regeneration.

This connects to...

...Nelisha Wickremasinghe whose description of the 'Trimotive Brain' shows how self-compassion and warm awareness can help us find the same generous acceptance of our own behaviour that we can often find quite easily for that of our friends or even a dog (because seeing ourselves at the centre of things sometimes means that we see ourselves not as especially important but as especially stupid or pathetic).
 
This connects to...

...Graham Leicester and Maureen O'Hara (Dancing at the Edge and Ten Things to Do in a Conceptual Emergency)  who follow Carl Rogers in talking of the ‘person’ not the ‘individual’. A person exists only in relationship, living a life in a pattern of other lives. Life has ‘mutual’ qualities, which can only be fully realised through shared patterns of life. It is, they say, ‘the difference between phoning home to say you're stuck in traffic and phoning to say you are traffic’.

...and Daniel Wahl showing that the mistaken belief that we have understood the system results in dictatorial behaviour. A better way to affect complex dynamic systems as a participant is to change them while going with - not against - their flow. Aspiring to gain personal professional or political prestige negatively influence the way we deal with complex systems.

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