Yes, I continue to learn much from the quantum paradigm and world view. At one level, there is a way in which I feel I can relax my certainty of gaze into feeling the fluidness of invoking energy into material form. So many more choices that become available. For me, it is more like stepping into the playground and being able to feel it. The learning is about how to work with it. What to do with it.
At another level, it is about beginning to see difference. I appreciate some of the comparisons: linear to complex, Newtonian to quantum. These themselves have limits, of course. That is what language does. It reveals and it conceals. Sometimes even tricks us into an old energy pattern. Reifies a form that is just another guess of what is happening. But the language creates invitation to see differently. I find if I don’t get stuck on the words, or even the concept of words (if that makes sense), the field of seeing becomes much larger.
Here’s a few of those comparisons that I just saw from a colleague, Howard Mason in Kentucky. I met he and his colleague a few years back at an Art of Hosting training.
Newtonian
-Atomistic (focus on functional parts)
-Abosolute (assumes certainty and predictability; emphasis on control)
-Reductive (the whole is the sum of the parts; parts exist independently and are interchangeable; coordination must be imposed)
-Either / Or (selective and exclusionary; there is only one truth and one best way; there is inescapable tension between the individual and the group)
-Certainty (focus on here and now, facts, actuality; values ignored)
-Subject / Object Split (leader is detached from people of the organization; the world is out there)
Quantum
-Holistic (focus on relationships and integration)
-Indeterminate (value in uncertainty and ambiguity; requires trust and intuition; nurtures emergence)
-Emergent, Self-Organizing (whole is greater than the sum of its parts; each part is defined by relationships with other parts; order or patterning emerges spontaneously)
-Both / And (inclusive and synergistic; individual and the group are mutually defining in dialogue with experience)
-Possibility (focus is on creating; thinking outside the box; exploring unknown, potential; value are central)
-Participatory Universe (leader is “in the world;” both are mutually defined)
From the world view, the leadership capacities become more clear.