Donella Meadows, Whole Earth Winter 1997, “Places to Intervene in a System”, is one of my favorite articles from this writer, who appeared as a columnist in our local newspaper.

“So how do you change paradigms? Thomas Kuhn, who wrote the seminal book about the great paradigm shifts of science, has a lot to say about that. In a nutshell, you keep pointing at the anomolies and failures in the old paradigm, you come yourself, loudly, with assurance, from the new one, you insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.”

Update 10/2002: Unfortunately, the on-line link to this article seems to have died, so I’ve deleted the link. The Whole Earth Review has a link to another article: “Dancing With Systems” which is an excerpt from her unfinished book. I love this article. What a gift from a great local thinker!