Not Frightening the Horses

When dealing with science and engineering “STEM” and other numerate bean-counter accountant & management “MBA” types it’s funny what comes up in conversation.

In dialogue you might pick-up considerations like Love and Spirituality, but you won’t find those words in their spreadsheets or specifications. In sensible, real-world, day-job contexts where rubber meets the road it would confuse the team or “frighten the horses” to introduce such terminology. So

rather than Love,
I might say Care

rather than Spiritual,
I might say Humanistic

Few would argue that humans aren’t important to getting stuff done or that a job well done involves caring about the process & the outcomes, immediate & environmental, and our fellow humans too?

Remember I am an engineer and MBA type. I may give-up hanging onto the fact that Cybernetics was always intended to include the human psychological aspects of social governance. The term “governor” was attached metaphorically to steam engines long before cybernetics (governance) became synonymous with electro-mechanical control systems.

rather than Cybernetics,
I might say Systems Thinking (or Psybernetics?)

or a Systems Approach to Thinking, about anything, including thinking. Meta-thinking, to think before you think, to question how we think. Whatever words we use in the second place, let’s not lose sight of what we meant to mean in the first place.

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This post prompted doubly, by a weekend conversation amongst such people happy to use the first word in each pair – in interpersonal dialogue – AND by Sam (Elizaphanian) posting this today. The poets have always written love songs, but for the love of what?

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