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System Thinking Response

  • Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

It‘s hard for me to choose one single system. In my view, system 3 (a system of ecosystems and contaminants that weaken the,), system7 (a system of potential threats to human health and well-being), and system 8 (a system of sustainable agriculture with long time horizons) all align with my understanding of GMOs a lot. If I have to choose a “most,” the answer would be system 7 – a system of potential threats to human health and well-being. One significant stake in this system is the irreversible future. This stake appears in both system 3 and system 7. What’s more, from my perspective, GMOs are food for humans, so food safety must be the very first. Human beings rely on food to be alive. Mistakes in medical experiments are mostly under control in labs, but errors in GMOs would affect people all over the world.

  • Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders with different perspectives, and then describe the system from which they are operating?
  1. Scientist doing research:  Focus on how different types of fenestras function for different kinds of animals, plants, and insects. The problem they would face might be animal protection during their experiments. Also, their research might pose a risk to ecosystems.
  2. Artist doing art projects: Fenestra is treated as a biological pattern under this perspective.
  3. Medical investigator: They would focus on potential diseases related to fenestra in human bodies. Their research might pose a risk to people.

Kinship Cohort Reading

For the cohort group reading I am interested in Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan’s article “Introduction from Slanted Truths”. I resonate with the concept of “Gaia theory”. For my point of view, it is a materialistic explanation of our planet’s mechanism. Every planets are generated after the big explosion of universe. The area where has the high energy aggregated dust and different materials together in the universe, then the earliest planets were formed. Based on Gaia theory, our earth is just the sum of energy and it is “a single, self-regulating entity”. Each creature grows up by absorbing the sun’s energy and the energy transfers between different spacies. Besides, from the article, Gaia is Symbiosis. From my understanding, all creatures in our earth have either close or far connection. This idea is related to Buddhist book I have read. For example, every time when we take breath, we gain the energy from the space. After we die, our body will transfer to energy that other creatures will absorb, or the energy will be part of new life. In this case, we become different life form. If we trace back to the root of life, all we might be from the same ancestor. Therefore, we can even say that you are me and I am you. 

For Donna Haraway’s “The Companion Species Manifesto Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness”. I am confused about the differentiation and similarity between cyborgs and dog. Also I quite don’t understand why she said “I consider dog writing to be a branch of feminist theory”. For my understanding of the article, Donna Haraway treated dog as a trustworthy companion. The kinship between human and dog is strong and has long history.  

Systems Thinking and Satellites

Q1: Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

System 8, A system of sustainable agriculture, with long time horizons, is the system I aligned with my understanding of GMOs. As a student with the food safety background and who graduated from an agricultural university, I have studied specific assessments and safety laws for GM foods. In fact, GM foods are subject to systematic and comprehensive safety evaluation before they are marketed. China has established a safety evaluation technology system that is in line with international standards, which includes nutritional and toxicological evaluations in the area of food safety. Therefore, after the safety evaluation of these products, there is no problem in terms of food safety.

As for sustainable agriculture, we rely on excessive inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to achieve high yields in agriculture at present, which actually puts pressure on the environment, and this problem is becoming more and more prominent.In terms of labor demand, rural laborers are gradually moving to the cities and towns, and this contradiction is becoming increasingly prominent. To solve these problems, we need large-scale, mechanized and intensive cultivation, and GM crops can meet such needs. However, GMOs are helping to solve these problems, although I’m not a 100% supporter I think using GMOs to break through bottlenecks that other biological breeding technology occurred is necessary. We still need to evaluate of the effectiveness, the ability to compete for survival, and the evaluation of biodiversity, including plants, animals, and other aspects.

The stakeholders of system 8 might be farmers, government, enterprises and customers.

 

Q2: Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives, and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating?

Stakeholders of Satellites:

  1. Users, satellites improve our living system for example safety, remote connections/communication, entertainment, etc.
  2. Government, the initial idea of satellites use is for national security system and some military needs.
  3. Rocket manufacturer and related services company, operating in a system of business. The system reduces launch costs and ramped-up orbital space tourism.

Puppets – Systems Mapping

Concept Map

Reinforcing Feedback Loop:

Through concept mapping, I realize there is a lot more I can talk about than I original thought. The connection between life is like a play, the play becomes the life – puppets reinforced how we see soulless humans and how we think of humans without souls when seeing a puppet, the two create an interesting feedback loop.

Skin: Fenestra – Systems Map

Concept Map and other system diagrams:

 

My discover:

For the topic: Although “fenestra“ is a technical term used in several different disciplines, it has something in common.  The function behind this constructure is always about transportation and interflow. It helps create a balance in the system and facilitates communication between the inner side and the outside of a single system.

For the system diagrams: I’m used to using a mind map to help me think and organize my thoughts. This is my first time using a concept map, and I felt a little uncomfortable while building it. I think it is because these two kinds of maps are similar but different that the old way of thinking influenced me. The iceberg helps me a lot by showing the development of the word’s meaning. I connected these fragments by following how fenestra’s meaning is added.

Systems Thinking Response

Q1: Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

My understanding of GMOs is more aligned with the system 2 – A system of research ethics and risk management. I agree with what Howard Silverman mentioned in the video – “Seeing the world through the eyes of another”. System 2 aims to evaluate the input, output, outcome and impact in a relatively comprehensive perspective.

“Does the value of the knowledge gained outweigh any potential risk to participants or others affected by the study?” is a central question in system 2. This also requires stakeholders with different perspectives and standpoint to assess the result and impact.

In this case, 1) the researcher cares about the success of this pilot for a scientific breakthrough; 2) Environmentalists have concerns on GMOs negative impact on ecosystems. 3) the Governments of countries in which people are suffering from hunger hope that GMOs can help solve the hunger problem.

 

Q2: Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives, and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating?

In my topic – Code of Arms, 3 stakeholders could be:

1.Traditional noble family who owns the Code of Arms: They hope to pass down its code of arms from one generation to another. They care about how to keep the original design while manifesting each generation’s feature. Some of them might also want the privilege of owning the Code of Arms.

2. Family or Individual who wants to design its own Code of Arms: For the families or people don’t have the Code of Arms to inherit from ancestors, they might want to own one. So they will seek the design guidance and the registration procedure.

3.Government/Ministry of Culture: They need to think about how to inherit and advocate it as a culture.

Response to System Thinking & GMOs

Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?

 

I find myself aligned with the third system, “A system of ecosystems and contaminants that weaken them” the most. The biggest stake in this system is the irreversible future. Ecosystems are complex systems, and in the past, we had already cost a lot of mistakes (non-native species, culls of species regarded as pests, the DDT that killed bald eagles through an unexpected chain of food cycle….etc). I find anyone who feels confident in denying risk like this extremely arrogant and overly-confident, even if it’s coming from a scientist.

 

Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives, and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating? 

 

Puppets:

  1. Animists – This group of people operates in a system of ethics around the treatment of puppets, as in this belief system, all things have spirit and souls.
  2. Puppeteers – This group of people operates in a system to advocate the preservation of tradition and business of Puppetry. There might be a lot more different systems within this system as there are a wide range of culturally different practices of puppetry throughout the world
  3. Parents and Educators – This group of people is the audience of the puppetry, or more the people who decided whether the children should be exposed to puppetry and learn things through puppetry (e.g. Sesame Street and other storytelling performances using puppets). There might be studies and research done on the use of puppetry and its impact on children’s development, which parents and educators might take into consideration when exposing children to puppetry.

 

Systems Mapping – Coat of Arms

Concept Mapping

 

Triangle Mapping

 

What I learnt?

Concept Map is a great tool to help sort out the relationship of concepts of my research topic.  By creating the concept map, I better understand concepts, terms and ideas related to the topic  and how they work. Also, I think I can keep referring to, visiting and revising the concept in the following weeks.

Besides, I also create a Triangle diagram to show the evolution of “Coat of Arms” and the key event behind each stage.

Brachen, Rewilding, and Mappamundi

I did research in several different veins this week, further exploring gardens and borders. There are a couple of directions that look promising that I want to dig deeper into.

I read a little bit about the gender roles in maintaining cottage gardens, finding that it has gone back and forth between a feminine and a masculine duty over the centuries. I also learned that in the early 1800’s in England, there was an effort to give gardens to people in the working class. It was thought that “the male labourer possessing and possessed by his garden was to be made moral through useful bodily toil” (Sayer 45). Simplistic and paternalistic.

I then turned my attention to the Brachen in Berlin and several rewilding efforts. It is here that I want to spend the bulk of my research time moving forward, as I feel I have just scratched the surface and I am captivated. The Brachen in Berlin were abandoned spaces, caught between the eastern and the western sides of Germany during the Cold War. These spaces, at one time industralized, were allowed to fall into disrepair, and plants reclaimed the space. Then, once the wall fell, developers started re-taking these spaces. I ready about how these Brachen, for so many, represented hope and possibility when they were industrial voids — far more than anything they became.

I want to learn more about the power of plants to take over man-made things. I want to find examples of other places where this has been documented, and I want to research what happened in the first couple months of the pandemic when the US/Europe/Asia was at its most shut-down. I would like to capture the duality of the fragility and resilience of the plant species that inhabit our past and present.

Tactically, I am still interested in the mappamundi, and I think I want to make one from the perspective of the plants (likely local to Chicago) and try to use that as a media to record them/tell their story, or something along those lines. I found the mappamundi intriguing in that they “by exaggerating the spread of time depicted within their borders, the mappamundi also demonstrate that maps in general need not be seen as reflecting only spatial realities… they may also consist of historical aggregations or cumulative inventories of events that occur in space.” (Woodward 519). The mappamundi captured geography, yes, but also history, religious stories, and itineraries. They cant necessarily be used to locate latitude and longitude of towns, but they could probably tell you the order that you would come across those towns as you moved up a given river. There were also precise legends inscribed in them, and they captured illustrations of different animals and humans.

I think this is something I’d like to explore from the perspective of plants in Chicago. Maybe there is a good way to capture some of the history of the landscape and plant species as they have changed over time. Maybe there are ways to also capture the plants that are still here – weeds, cultivated, I’m not sure. I’d like to talk to someone at the Morton Arboretum or someplace similar for my interview to try to get some of that information. Also, just as the people who were trying to protect the Brachen in Berlin did not put them on a map for fear of calling attention to them, I like that a mappamundi would not give you terribly accurate locales of any of the plants included. Not that I’m all that worried, but it ties in with our reading about refusal, as well.

Systems thinking and Genetically Modified food

Systems thinking and Genetically Modified food

  • Which system (type of stakeholder) that Easterbrook identified did you find your own understanding of GMOs most aligned with? Why? What are some of the stakes of these stakeholders?
    System 2, a system of research ethics and risk management most closely fits my understanding of GMOs, or rather the naive hope that all science operates from a system where essentially benefits of conducting a study outweigh any potential costs of the study. I think I identify most with this system, in an ideal world, this would be the system that takes into account a wide variety of stakeholders. For example, one would hope that in this Rothamsted GMO study, the risk assessment would consider all of the differing systems that Easterbrook identifies. I suppose potentially they did take them all into account, and decided it was worth the risk, but to Easterbrook’s observation, “The knowledge gain from this one trial is too small to justify creating this level of societal conflict”.

    To sum up the idea of the Principle of Complementarity, I understand this to mean that multiple things can be true at once. I appreciate system 2, because in theory, it takes that principle to heart and tries to come up with a diplomatic answer to a difficult question, and to take several different view points into account. However, I’d imagine that like most systems, this doesn’t operate without influences from other systems. So, in practice I can imagine that the idealist perspective I’m reflected on this system as being equitable and logical, is probably often skewed by influences from other systems – in this case I’m specifically thinking about capitalism.

  • Using your own topic for research, can you Identify 3 stakeholders (groups or phenomenon) with different perspectives, and then describe the system (the stakes) from which they are operating?
    1) A system of scientific research: By studying how colonial organisms came to be, science can gain a deeper understanding about evolution, different life types, and even the ocean ecosystem. This system would likely view the knowledge as worth the cost of causes damage to a small amount of these organisms.
    2) A system concerned with environmental preservation: In a similar vein as the article, there is a conflict between scientific inquiry, and preservation of the thing itself. For example with coral reefs, the process by which scientists gather specimens to study often irreparably destroy the organisms themselves.
    3)A system that is focused on tourism, and possibly education: This system may include aquariums that house colonial organisms, or companies that host tours of coral reefs with hopes of educating visitors, and making money.