Leverage:Places to Intervene in a System (by Donella Meadows)

I finally read this, after hearing Toby Hemenway suggest it several months ago. Wow!

I thought, there must be an amazing conversation about this happening on permies.com. Which may get damnuautocorrected to premies.com sometimes on this computer, not sure how to turn that off, pre-apologies if it does. (not sure where to intervene in a Mac.)

Anyway, I think this is really profound and I also wonder how it can inform the garden, the homestead, the community--where I am.

In other words, what's in my zone 0 - zone -5 that I have the most leverage over?
And what is the advantage to making changes in less-leveraged places? (more margin of error, faster response rate, gets you through to fight another day?)

I don't know enough about systems analysis to know how the statements in this article were been arrived at, but I'm assuming it's real enough science. But how do you work with this? Anyone have examples of places they've applied what this article talks about? either in your garden system or in your community?

Can anyone do a systems analysis of Permies.com? as in flows, leverage points, how it can continue to grow in usefulness and efficiency of information getting to the person who needs it at the time they need it, effectiveness of nurturing of motivation and inspiration to keep up efforts toward a better world, inclusiveness and accessibility, etc.?

Here's a few links to get people started.

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - webpage

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - downloadable pdf

Twelve Leverage Points - wikki article

Donella Meadows - wikki article

I think I have some reading to do...

Thanks, Burra! It seems like a whole new angle on life.

I still think it would be great to have a way to label a new thread or a post as "relevant to function __" so you could search by function (heating, food, energy, "urban food supply cost-cutting nutritious ethical," etc.) rather than by element (rmh, farms, solar panels, "growies," etc.).

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:Can anyone do a systems analysis of Permies.com? as in flows, leverage points, how it can continue to grow in usefulness and efficiency of information getting to the person who needs it at the time they need it, effectiveness of nurturing of motivation and inspiration to keep up efforts toward a better world, inclusiveness and accessibility, etc.?

Oooh, I do love a volunteer! You were volunteering, right?

It seems like a whole new angle on life.

I've read the whole thing through once, and to be honest there was so much stuff that was completely alien to my way of thinking, especially on the stuff at the top of the list, like market forces and government and US ways of thinking, that I'm going to have to let it all bounce around my head for a while and then go back and read it through again. Maybe a few times. I get the feeling they are trying to change a world view that I don't share, so first of all I have to understand the view they are coming from. I might be some time. My brain isn't as flexible as it used to be...

I still think it would be great to have a way to label a new thread or a post as "relevant to function __" so you could search by function (heating, food, energy, "urban food supply cost-cutting nutritious ethical," etc.) rather than by element (rmh, farms, solar panels, "growies," etc.).

I have a feeling this was discussed, a little, once before. But I can't find where. We rely on hand-me-down software from the coderanch forums, so we are a little limited what changes we can implement. There is a huge new update, basically completely new software, being prepared though, which might make something like this a little easier. I haven't used it yet though so I'm guessing somewhat. What we can do, in theory, is create more forums, covering all those functions, and cross-post messages to *all* of the appropriate forums, which would allow people to browse according to their interests. Again, there a couple of problems - firstly we're just about at the limit of how many forums the current software will support so it will really have to wait a while. Plus we'd probably need a bit of help adding posts to relevant forums - the authors, and in fact anybody, could help with this by reporting the first post in a thread and listing other places that they think it would fit in.

Burra Maluca wrote:
I have a feeling this was discussed, a little, once before. But I can't find where. We rely on hand-me-down software from the coderanch forums, so we are a little limited what changes we can implement. There is a huge new update, basically completely new software, being prepared though, which might make something like this a little easier. I haven't used it yet though so I'm guessing somewhat. What we can do, in theory, is create more forums, covering all those functions, and cross-post messages to *all* of the appropriate forums, which would allow people to browse according to their interests. Again, there a couple of problems - firstly we're just about at the limit of how many forums the current software will support so it will really have to wait a while. Plus we'd probably need a bit of help adding posts to relevant forums - the authors, and in fact anybody, could help with this by reporting the first post in a thread and listing other places that they think it would fit in.

Burra - I'm personally skeptical about fragmenting further and further. We risk ending up with lots of seldom visited subforums that are so specific that nothing quite fits.

Some blog platforms have a tagging function where you can tag a post as relevant to more than one idea. I think this would be a nice way to get around the many-forums/many-sub-topics issues... You can tag a post as being about RMH/heating generally/harvesting fuel.

Joshua Myrvaagnes wrote:I finally read this, after hearing Toby Hemenway suggest it several months ago.  Wow!

Anyway, I think this is really profound and I also wonder how it can inform the garden, the homestead, the community--where I am.

In other words, what's in my zone 0 - zone -5 that I have the most leverage over?
And what is the advantage to making changes in less-leveraged places?  (more margin of error, faster response rate, gets you through to fight another day?)

I don't know enough about systems analysis to know how the statements in this article were been arrived at, but I'm assuming it's real enough science.  But how do you work with this?  Anyone have examples of places they've applied what this article talks about? either in your garden system or in your community?

All of this type of "Systems stuff" is swirling around in my brain right now. Wow is right!

So far I see the things that I have the most leverage over are me, myself, and I:  specifically, my knowledge (which increases my designing "imagination" as Mr. Mollison meant it) and my routines, as they contribute to the improvement of my desired "regenerative lifestyle". I want to increase both. In my view, personality psychology is a huge factor in systems involving humans, including my own psychology. I am starting there.

Beyond myself, I control the distribution of funds for our family--bill paying, etc. I control where to allocate money, and I am using it to build soil in this season, particularly, and buy seeds for next Spring.

Those are my top two answers to this question on the first take, I am sure I will tease more out later as stuff continues percolating in my brain.