Dr. Bhandari and R. M. Fisher "Systems Thinking" Collaboration

[R.Michael Fisher]

I am sharing a brief email conversation I had with Dr. Gokul Bhandari, from the Business faculty at University of Windsor, as we have mutual interests in bringing about a higher quality curriculum in higher education today (especially, in Business) that centralizes "Fear" as a subject and important force in determining so much about what is going on in higher education. Our first conversation on email (below) accompanies the diagram/model (above) that I have extracted from the ppt presentation Bhandari gave in Hong Kong recently with Desh Subba (founder of "philosophy of fearism")... Bhandari has a great interest in cybernetic systems and communication and would like to apply his quadrant model to "Fear" (I added the word "Fear" in the middle of his model).

Hi Dr. Bhandari, 

Desh Subba sent me a link to the youtube video of you and him at Hong Kong University 2017, from a talk you gave " Perspectives on Fear" -- despite my being an English only speaker I did listen and gathered bits of your talk, thanks to the slides in your ppt presentation in English... great. 

I'm inviting you to dialogue with me anytime you would like to on this topic. Desh said you had a copy of our book. I'm most curious of your interest in this topic. I would like you to write something up on this talk in English if you would and submit it to me so I (or you) can post it on the Fearlessness Movement ning (see below)... that would be great... oh, I did make a poster of you and Desh and put it up in the Photos already on the FM ning site. 

I am particularly interested to have a good copy of your ppt slide of the 4 quadrant model, by itself (and/or your whole ppt presentation)... and, if you have done any prior writing on fear(ism) I would like to have a copy as well... thanks. 

-look forward to hearing from you,

-Michael

Dear Dr. Fisher,

Thank you for your email. We had an interesting discussion on Fearism last week in Hong Kong. I had to speak in Nepali because of the audience but my main points were basically as follows:

1) Desh Subba's primary contribution is his compilation of Fear literature from various sources and disciplines.

2) What is lacking is a unified framework that ties together a myriad of fear related concepts. Without having such an integrated framework, it is difficult to propose solutions to overcome FEAR.

My interests:

I am an Information Systems faculty and a big believer in Systems Thinking (understanding relationships, patterns, context, communication and feedback) in any setting. My view is that the solution to FEAR can only come from providing the right information (or knowledge)  to the right people at the right time using the right medium (communication and context). FEAR is also not a homogeneous concept. From information-centric viewpoint, FEAR has a unit of analysis (such as individual, cultural, societal, national, global etc.) and the provided information's level of abstraction must match with the unit of analysis. My hypothesis is that even if the information is factually correct, if the unit and abstraction levels do not match, that mismatch will engender FEAR.

I am highly interested in analyzing FEAR from the info-centric perspective.

The 4 quadrant model that I discussed is basically a standard micro-macro interaction of the Systems Thinking paradigm (not my creation). I was proposing it as starting point to analyze FEAR and its solution.

I have not published anything related to FEAR but given my current responsibility as an MBA Program Director, I would like to explore implore implications of FEAR on curriculum and pedagogy. Let us have the communicating going.

My inclinations:

Systems Thinking of Maturana and Varela, Communication-> Wittgenstein's philosophy of language

Thank you once again for reaching me out.

Best regards, 

Gokul Bhandari

[btw. we are continuing on to develop the Fisher-Bhandari Model of Integral Teaching & Learning, that locates the "integrative" models of Knowing, Doing Being in higher education with Ken Wilber's critical integral theory and my own work on Fear... stay tuned for all that, as we have put in a proposal to a teaching and learning conference in Detroit in early 2018... I'll let you know more about our model as we pursue to bring "Fear" into the curricula of higher education, especially in Business]