Resilience Thinking

I have often - ironically - accused the pious general systems theory zealots of believing they can predict the uncertainty principle. And I have roundly - and mercilessly - mocked them for believing they can tame chaos.

Trouble is, they really do believe that they can tame chaos.

In 2010, the Resilience Alliance released ‘Assessing Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: Workbook for Practitioners‘¹. But before we go there, and why it matters, let’s first establish the authors. Lance Gunderson, Ann Kinzig, Allyson Quinlan, and Brian Walker.

Of those four, three are still with the Resilience Alliance², including Lance Gunderson. In fact, going through their list of members, there’s sufficient material here for weeks of commentry.

The only exception of the four is Ann Kinzig, who now appears to work with… wait, what? She’s at ASU, but also a contributor at ‘Governing’³, which apparently is a magazine released since… 1987⁴. But more importantly -

‘She served as a American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton admin, from 1998-99‘

Setting aside her fellowship of the Rockefeller-funded AAAS (which arranged the original meet culminating in the launch of the Society of the Advancement of General Systems Theory in the mid-1950s),,, we yet AGAIN arrive at the Clinton admin.