A vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path [in Mediated Modeling page 43]
Interpretation
The importance of having clear values in a vision outweighs the specifics of how it will be achieved.
Donella Meadows emphasizes that when evaluating a vision, the fundamental values it promotes are far more significant than the detailed plans on how to bring that vision to life. Clarity of values provides a strong foundation for decision-making and inspires commitment, while the implementation path can vary and evolve over time based on circumstances and learnings.
In practice
This quote could be shared in a leadership seminar to emphasize the importance of core values.
Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.
There is hardly a place on Earth where people do not log, pave, spray, drain, flood, graze, fish, plow, burn, drill, spill or dump. There is no life zone, with the possible exception of the deep ocean, that we are not degrading.
Speak the truth._x000D_ Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,_x000D_ and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power._x000D_ Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence._x000D_ All growth is not good._x000D_ The environment is a necessity, not a luxury._x000D_ There is such a thing as enough.
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems arenβt designed to produce them, if we donβt speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course.
There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.
As believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance.
Looking deeply at life as it is in this very moment, the meditator dwells in stability and freedom.
Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here-should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplext Seeking shall find Him.
The performance of black American identity feels very different from actually living in a black body. There's a dissonance between inside and outside.
The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped β it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.
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