By Mario deSantis, September 18, 1998

Our past articles on the theory of living systems have provided a philosophical background for a new way to see the world. We understand now that the past Darwinism's world view that life is a struggle for the survival of the fittest has been the cause of the deterioration of our natural environment, of the artificial divisions of people, and of the inability of people to build healthy human communities. The theory of living systems sees life not as the struggle for the survival of the fittest but as a cooperative process of creation and intelligence among all living systems, that is the web of life [1]. This cooperative process takes place within the framework of established principles of organization [2], and as a consequence our societal settings must undergo transformational changes compatible with such principles. These transformational societal changes are occurring all over the world in the field of science, education, management, business, economics and politics. These changes are taking place to satisfy the contingent needs of our societal organizations, however, there hasn't been a strong unified effort to rationalize such changes as due to an overall new way to see the world. In fact, these changes have been implemented under different banners or management fads such as reinventing governments, rewiring the corporations, re-engineering business processes, quality improvements, and so forth.

In June 1997, I wrote the paper "Coping with Changes: An overview of the Learning Organization, Knowledge Economy and Current Practices in Information Technology Applications". I find that the notions of the Learning Organization and of the Knowledge Economy are excellent metaphors for describing what the web of life should be within our societal business environment. Saskatchewan has been tardy in effecting the needed transformational changes and the recent Channel Lake political scandal [3], the rampant racism across the province [4] and last Thursday's senseless killing of a 16 year old boy by the police in Regina, point the blame to an inadequate black and white mental model of our political and business leaders [5]. Therefore, in an effort to facilitate needed transformational changes in Saskatchewan, we are planning to write a series of articles depicting the corrupted behavior of a segment of our business and political leadership, and in this respect I will be using my own personal experiences along with some researches and studies provided by Dr. John Hylton, Executive Director of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Regina. This series of articles will be published under the general title "Need of Transformational Changes in Saskatchewan" and the first article will deal with the description of the Learning Organization and of the Knowledge Economy.

REFERENCES

[1] THE WEB OF LIFE, by Fritjof Capra, Anchor Books, 1996

[2] "Living Systems: Principles of Organization and Building Sustainable Human Communities", by Mario deSantis, September 1998,

[3] Articles in the StarPhoenix of Saskatoon, dated April 11, 1998, page Local A11: "Asleep at the switch", by M. Wyatt, "Ministers condoned risky trading: report", by Bonny Braden, "Commission deal sweet for Channel Lake buyer: Grits", by Chris Varcoe. Also, refer to the article in the StarPhoenix, dated April 17, 1998, page A3: "Risks part of business, Messer says", by Bonny Braden.

[4] Article in the StarPhoenix of Saskatoon, dated July 15, 1998, "Racism rampant in Sask.", by Trevor Sutter.

[5] "Electronic Commerce, Internet and Cultural Changes, By Mario deSantis, July 1998,