Prologue: Maps to the Real World
«Whatever your personal beliefs and experiences, I invite you to consider that we need a new worldview to navigate this chaotic time. We cannot hope to make sense using our old maps. It won't help to dust them off or reprint them in bold colors. The more we rely on them, the more disoriented we become. They cause us to focus on the wrong things and blind us to what's significant. Using them, we will journey only to greater chaos» – p. xi
«When scientists confronted this challenge at the beginning of the 20th century, they couldn't accept the world revealed to them in their experiments» – p. xi
«It was only when scientists were willing to accept their confusion instead of fleeing from it and only when they changed the questions they were asking, only then could they discover the insights and formulations that gave them great new capacity» – p. xii
«Self-organizing systems demonstrate the ability of all life to organize into systems of relationship that increase capacity. These systems also demonstrate a different relationship between automony and control, showing how a large system maintains itself and grows stronger only as it encourages great amounts of individual freedom» – p. xiii
«We have spent several decades attempting to change organizations, communities, nations and each other. We have not yet been successful in these attempts, or they have resulted in troubling unintended consequences. With so many failures, it seems clear that we need to rethink our basic assumptions about how change happens–for this, life is the best teacher» – p. xiii
«...we can't' make this journey alone–we need good companions, patience, endurance, and courage» – p. xiv
