Post-Crash Analysis and Preflight Checklist

The Hidden Power

For this final episode of series 1, I wanted to build on Buckminster Fuller's idea of our planet - our habitat and life-support system - as being like a spaceship - Spaceship Earth, as he calls it - and building on this idea to use two related models for our discussion: the post-crash analysis and the preflight checklist

First we look at the globally used post-crash analysis as a model for investigating governance - "It's important that they are not looking to blame someone," Ed says.

Then we get onto Ed's Preflight checklist - essentially a renewal of our global social contracts, or constitutions, as they are known, that would take into account the conditions necessary for our survival.

Finally we hear from Gerald Midgley, philosopher on human systems and founding father of systems thinking as an intentional discipline, spelling out with some excitement the impact of what in many respects has been his life's work.

Gerald Midgley:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Midgley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_systems_thinking

Ed’s preflight checklist for planet Earth:

https://www.edstraw.com/principles-for-systemic-governing/

Eileen Munro (Episode 2 Contributor) advocating post crash analysis model to address culture of blame in child protection:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/serious-case-review-child-protection

On checklists - great article overall, if you want to cut straight to flying fortress story go about 1/4 of the way in, paragraph opening “On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio…” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist

On October 30, 1935, at Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio, the U.S. Army Air Corps held a flight competition for airplane manufacturers vying to build its next-generation long-range bomber. It wasn’t supposed to be much of a competition. In early evaluations, the Boeing Corporation’s gleaming aluminum-alloy Model 299 had trounced the designs of Martin and Douglas. Boeing’s plane could carry five times as many bombs as the Army had requested; it could fly faster than previous bombers, and almost twice as far. A Seattle newspaperman who had glimpsed the plane called it the “flying fortress,” and the name stuck. The flight “competition,” according to the military historian Phillip Meilinger, was regarded as a mere formality. The Army planned to order at least sixty-five of the aircraft.

On the Psychology of Military Incompetence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Psychology_of_Military_Incompetence

9 Lessons from the Blue Zones:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/changing-the-way-america-eats-moves-and-connects-one-town-at-a-time/

Thoughts on Purpose:

Listen to Why Cornel West is hopeful (but not optimistic) from Future Perfect on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/future-perfect/id1438157174?i=1000486452652

Welcome to the Anthropocene:

https://vimeo.com/anthropocene/shortfilm

Perspective, via some very interesting maps:

https://earthtime.org

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