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Welcome!

This site is dedicated to promoting complex systems thinking, pattern thinking, and other ways of thinking about and understanding our world that promote healthy connections and relationships to self, others, society, and the environment.


My work with The International Bateson Institute and “How to get systems unstuck.”
Video © 2015 Nora Bateson
(I appear at 2:24)


Warm Data Labs

We live in a complex world...

And, now we are facing increasingly complex and perplexing issues with no “one way” to fix them. In fact, the problems we face now and will face in the future are going to require very different ways of understanding the depth, extent, and intertwined nature of these issues and are going to require very different ways of addressing them.

Warm Data Labs provide new and intriguing ways of developing complex understandings of the problems we face, and can stimulate new partnerships and sets of meaningful approaches to dealing with “wicked” problems.

I am an authorized Warm Data Labs host.

CLICK HERE for further information.


Reading List & Book Purchasing

Find Interesting Books & Support This Website 

You can order the books listed directly from this website as a way to support my work on this website and those listed below:

Jeff Bloom’s BlogJeff Bloom’s Photos
The Nook
Exploring Learning & the Complexity of Living Systems
The Store by The Wisdom Loft

You also can follow the links to my partner booksellers and order all of your books, music, videos, etc.

But, please use the links provided on various pages of this site or in the sidebar. You can bookmark these links for later use, as well. All of your purchases will be supporting my work.


A Lament & Visions

I worry that we are losing sight of children in schooling. By politicizing schooling, our children have taken on the identity of a number in a box. Politicians aren’t really interested in “THE child,” only in the political capital they can accumulate by playing on the emotions of the voters. Corporations are only interested in the billions of dollars to be made in tests, curriculums, and books. In addition, our educational institutions focus on educating “heads”… and only the left side of heads at that. This “educating” focuses not only on the logical and rational, but also on the superficial and disconnected. High-stakes testing, narrow and mechanistic views of curriculum, dispassionate and detached views of children, and limited views and visions of learning are “killing” our children. Most children enter school with their intelligence, curiosity, and creativity intact and thriving. However, it doesn’t take long to turn them into living “robots,” who no longer enjoy learning and who’ve lost their curiosity, passion, and creativity. Even though each child is unique, schools expect them to conform to some sort of lifeless standard. Children’s voices are silenced; and their spirits are deadened. Yet, children are capable of so much more than we can ever imagine. This site and my other sites are devoted to exploring these issues and to pushing the limits of our assumptions about schooling and learning.

My work is embedded in the notion of children’s abilities to think deeply and creatively. At the same time, they are capable systems thinkers, pattern thinkers, and inquirers who learn through play, exploration, talk, and other forms of social interaction. Schools tend to limit their learning and limit the ways in which they communicate what they know. As adults, parents, and educators, we need to provide children with different opportunities to learn, explore, and communicate. In fact, we must provide such opportunities.

 

A Wonderful Video that Points to the Fundamental Importance of Art

Laurie Anderson — Delightful, Inspirational, Joyous