A Look at Systems through the Learning Lens

     Welcome back to all my fellow wonderers out there. Thank you for wandering back into my neck of the forest. At this point in the conversation, we have constructed a tool of sorts (See Clumsiness and Climbing Castles). This tool could be thought of as a lens, through which we can analyze anything we do. For this conversation I will refer to it as "the learning lens". Admittedly so, it is not a very precise tool, but it does give us a way to identify where we can make improvements. Regardless of what we do, precision within the parameters of the activity is usually the goal (See Precisely: What I was Thinking). Oddly enough, when things go precisely, we tend to hardly notice. When something goes wrong however, it is often blatantly obvious. In the learning process, the most vital step is 'Noticing' (see Noticing Noticing: Learning to Learn).  Clumsiness then is the opposite of precision and also the key to recognizing where we can make improvements.

     While doing something very specific such as throwing a ball or speaking a new language, it is fairly easy to see how this tool can be applied. Example: If I throw a ball to someone, but it goes sailing over their head or into the dirt, obviously my throw lacked precision (one could also say it was a clumsy throw). I could then start examining where the throw went wrong. If it was high, I probably released it too early. If it landed in the dirt, I perhaps released it too late or didn't throw it hard enough. While trying out a foreign language, if my partner cannot understand me, it likely has something to do with the clumsy way I pronounced my words or perhaps my lack of precise vocabulary. That can even be true in a person's native language. 

     Both of these settings are perfectly appropriate for applying the learning lens. Using it properly can help us notice what went wrong, thus showing where we can make improvements. Recently however, I have come to believe that this tool is equally, if not more, useful when considering other aspects of my life that have less to do with acquiring specific skills and more to do with the general way I interact with everything and everyone around me. To more thoroughly explain what I mean by this, I would like to open up the conversation to the topic of systems. Later, I will explore how the learning lens can be applied to the various levels of the system.

     Merriam Webster online gives us the following as an entry point into the topic "System - : a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole." 

     In less academic terms, a system is a big thing that is made up of smaller things. Systems exist all around us, and they don't stop there. Each person is an individual system, made up of many smaller systems working in unison. A few of them are the skeletal, cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, muscular and endocrine systems. Also, each one of us makes up a whole part of any number of larger systems such as families, social circles, schools, communities, neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, continental populations, the world, biological life, animals, primates and humans. (see Two infinity and Beyond) Objectively speaking, everything and everyone is interrelated (atomically, chemically, biologically, socially, gravitationally, electromagnetically, etc) and forms one super system that is simultaneously too small and too large for any individual to completely comprehend or even observe. Subjectively speaking, it is possible to divide the whole into any number of smaller subsystems for analysis. It is important to note that any division one makes is essentially arbitrary and only exists because we think about it so.

     This is where I will leave the conversation for today. As you have perhaps already noticed, the previous paragraph begins to transition us from the general idea of learning to the various contexts in which we may apply it. Thank you again for joining my thoughts here. To anyone who has been following along since the beginning, it could be interesting to return to the opening poem "Mosaic of Mind". It may, or may not, take on a different meaning as this idea continues to more fully branch out. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you for reading along. I really cannot explain how grateful I am for your company!