Questions Live On, Answers are Transient.

Today’s Questions (28^th March 2020) …

The Corona Virus is shocking the world (present tense, ongoing). Many people are saying the world will not be the same afterwards. Many people are predicting how the world will be when the crisis is over. Actually, they have no idea whatsoever, but predicting (aka pretending you know) is a lucrative business. Selling your vision to others is also lucrative.
I have no idea how the world will be after the crisis, but I feel sure it will be very different.
As always, I do have Questions … a lot of them. We need to ask Questions … all the time.
IF … we are interested in shaping more natural and generative societies than the ones we were living in before the crisis hit us, I feel these Questions are worth serious consideration.

Because the nature of our world is relational, while the Questions are useful for individual reflection, they only become truly generative when considered together with others … those others with whom we want to shape society. None of us is an island, despite the fact that the current lockdowns may make us feel like one at the moment.

Do you too, believe in the potential and the power of people to create a better world?

Here are the Questions I’m reflecting on today …

• Heinz von Förster, a physicist and much more besides, said, „We see with our legs“. Only when we move, are we able to gain new perspectives.
  I’m a traveller, and have been all my life. This is how I have learned about the truly worthwhile things in life, things that are not „things“. The learning value far exceeds that of any learnings in the formal so-called education system.
  To what extent will the current travel bans limit our ability as humans to learn what is really useful about life?

• Here in Germany, all schools are currently closed. One serious debate taking place concerns whether or not to actually hold the final high-school exams which ought to be taking place very soon.
  So apparently, exam results take precedence over students‘ and teachers‘ health?
  Is it time to re-name education systems as schooling systems?
  Is it time to reframe all our ideas about learning? If so, how?

• What are we learning right now, while we are in lockdown, in our enforced „open prisons“?

• Do you believe that we can control nature? If so, why? How?
  If not, what do you understand by the notion of control?
  What does this mean for the way we design our organisations?

• How can we ensure that people never again need to flee and take refuge in a foreign land … that there are no more refugees?

• The Stock Exchanges of the world are nothing more than high-stakes casinos. Discuss.

• How do we know when we „know“?

Because all these Questions are all interrelated with one another,
they have limited meaning if considered separately.
Let’s beware the trap of fragmentation: our world is a whole.