Week Eleven Blog

Reflect on Mindwalk and what they were saying about the interconnections among all things, the mechanical vs. the organic view of systems, and other relevant topics.

Mindwalk movie is a philosophical deep conversation among three characters, a physicist, a politician, and a poet about system thinking. The whole movie was shot in Mont Saint Michel. It was bit boring most of the part. I was able to connect the movie with system thinking in 82th minutes and I enjoyed the last 25 minutes of the 1 hour 48 minutes long movie.  It was hard to comprehend about interconnectedness among all things in the first half of the movie but later part in the movie it was cleared to me. I liked how Sonia explain the different systemic view of a tree as Cartesian view versus systemic view. The poet Thomas Harriman asked the physicist Sonia what is life and she answered that “the essence of life is self-organization”. But I think life is more than just self-organization. We can’t compare human life with matters. If we used the word creation then there is a creator exists whether we see or not. I do see the interconnectedness of all thing in our ecosystems, the organisms, the trees, the mountain, the oceans, the solar systems, human, animals, and the whole universe. This amazing interconnectedness is the reminder of a superpower who organize and control the interconnectedness of all things out of our sight whom the people of faith recognize as God.

Systems theory knowledge helps us think deeper about anything we see and hear. I see Sonia as a pessimistic. She took her out of the holistic approach of systems thinking. She does not even think about her connection as part of a human system activity. Just thinking is not going solve the problem unless use it for a solution. We can’t solve the whole world’s problem alone but if we all share to solve some problem that is better than just thinking without doing nothing. In this aspect I like politician Jack whom I found pragmatic. Even though some of my classmates think politician just talk and do nothing then who solve the problem? If we don’t involve ourselves in political process how can we expect change and make the politician more accountable? If we just hate politician then we are on the the side of Sonia. We are the problem we if do not offer the solution. I do thing holistic approach of anything is better than short-cut method. If a doctor treats a patient just by looking at one symptom without taking holistic approach to collect other history of related symptoms then the cure will be for short term. So, we we see the world as living organisms then we need think about how everything is interconnected in this world and we need to take part in the systems to do our part to preserve the nature system without much disruption.

Even though the whole movie was dominated with only one media verbal it would have been easy if there were some pictorial or diagramical use of some of the complex systems thinking aspects were analyzed. The dialogue among three characters tried to give the message about mechanistic vs organic views of all components’ interconnectedness in the living world. It fascinates me how a physicist turned himself into a system thinker and explained such a nice way about organic world’s view and forgot about the blessings of machines in human life. Is it practically avoidable in this era of technology revolution? I personally think we can’t avoid the Cartesian approach of mechanistic view of the world in systems thinking. Over all I liked the movie and all three characters were well developed.