Zaid Khan

Our talk @Almashtalhouse shows how systemic design (systems thinking + design) supports Saudi Vision 2030. Three use cases: 🚇 @RCRCSA @RiyadhMetro_ last mile 🌳 @GreenRiyadh_SA labor & maintenance 🏛️ @DiriyahCo @DiriyahSeason modernization w/ heritage youtube.com/watch?v=M1Oyai…

Neoliberal economists. Bitcoin maximalists. Thiel-funded startups. New Right populists. Libertarians at large. What is the common thread? In The Twilight of Mammon, Imran Khan traces the influence and triumph of the Austrian School of Economics, from fin-de-siècle Vienna through the post-war order to today, when libertarian and right-wing-associated movements seek to complete the total subordination of society to market logic. Khan argues that the Austrian School was never merely an economic theory. Born in the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire, shaped by Social Darwinism, and given a foundational myth by Hayek's narrative anthropology, it became the moral core of the neoliberal project, exported globally through crisis, structural adjustment, and institutional capture. Now, as neoliberalism fractures under the weight of its own consequences, a harder Misesian faction is abandoning even the Hayekian compromise with state power. Billionaire oligarchs and far-right insurgents are converging under the guise of a populist revolt, but are in fact waging intra-elite warfare against the old school of Hayekian neoliberalism. Read more on Kasurian. Link in reply below:

Syria was the litmus test. The Academic Left, which made solidarity its vocation, failed it. In How the Academic Left Failed Syria, Sarah Al-Saeid explores how the post-Saidian academy turned sacrifice and critique into forms of victory in themselves. Said's Orientalism was once a tool, but over time calcified into a reigning orthodoxy of recursive critique. It seeped into the groundwater of public discourse, surfacing in vertical video and social media threads, in the moral grammar of protest movements, and even the intuitions of educated publics who have never read a page of Said yet think in categories his work made available. This culture of critique is divorced from any viable political imagination, sanctifying suffering as the only proof of moral seriousness, and the demand to resist, and keep resisting, a form of coercion that denies those it claims to champion the right not to die. This denial has material consequences, with a name, a geography, and a death toll. Syria was one of the few moments in the modern Levant where action, messy and fragile as it was, successfully broke free from the gravitational pull of endless critique. Yet it was precisely Syria's complexity that allowed the Academic Left to look and turn away. Syria's liberation from the Assad regime on 8 December 2024 has exposed the flawed moral logic of the Academic Left and requires a reckoning. Read more on Kasurian. Link in reply below:

A recap of the time we sketched systems as waves instead of circles and lines. Visualizing our work rhythms is a tricky shift to make. Here's to the journey ahead. linkedin.com/pulse/drawing-…

The Modus Vivendi is over. In Towards a Western Muslim Political Philosophy, Jacob Williams (@JacobP_Williams) articulates the unspoken contradictions at the heart of Muslims' political and civic engagement in the West: a pragmatic agreement to respect the same political ground rules and obey the law, without believing that these rules represent the principles we would ideally choose to live under. It may have worked when Muslims were a small minority who could pass under the radar. Those days are over. Increasingly, many Muslim organisations and politicians appear to understand that the foundation cannot hold. They are unconvinced by the modus vivendi, but they lack an alternative theological framework or any coherent vision for Muslim political life. The solution is to create a robust Islamic political philosophy suited to Western life in the 21st century. This requires engagement with the Islamic tradition that rejects blind imitation of earlier scholars’ conclusions, draws on the tools of analytic philosophy to achieve desperately needed conceptual clarity and argumentative rigour, and tests arguments against counterarguments with a precision that the current discourse entirely lacks. Read more on Kasurian. Link to the article in reply below:

Is an "Anti-Modernity" even possible? In Riding the Tiger, the second essay in Kasurian's Spring 2026 issue, @pashadelics explores the pitfalls of contemporary Muslim intellectual thought regarding industrial civilisation. A byproduct of Islamic civilisation's "triple catastrophe" in the early 20th century, an often reactionary posture and contemptuous attitude towards industrial civilisation has left Muslims unwilling and passive participants in a world not of their own making. The alternative is to become willing riders of the tiger, embracing the material reality we live in and becoming active agents in defining the world around us. After all, what is this tiger, this epoch defined by the industrial mode of production, but a mechanism fashioned by men? The strongest hands steer it. The only way out is through. Read more on Kasurian. Link to essay in reply below:

@_benjaminparry Very Tim Ingold of getting into the groove of a tree when splitting it. youtu.be/u-AasjuCq1I?si…

Understanding has this connotation of looking up. That you comprehend something by getting underneath it. But this isn't where it comes from. The "under" of understanding actually comes from an old English word meaning among or between. To really understand something you need to be in its midst. To soak it in. Understanding is not a synoptic view but a deep involvement.

📣 ورشة عمل: التصميم المنهجي: منظور جديد للتحول الحضري 🎤 يقدمها: المصممة/ سماح كامالمز بالتشارك مع المصمم/ زيد خان 📅 التاريخ: 4 فبراير 2026م ⏰ الوقت: 20:00 - 21:30 🌍 لغة الورشة: الانجليزية 📍 الموقع: مؤسسة بوتقة، الدرعية - الرياض، المملكة العربية السعودية 📄 نبذة عن الورشة: تسعى هذه الورشة إلى سد الفجوة بين المقاربات التقليدية في العمارة والتخطيط العمراني، وبين المجال الناشئ للتصميم النظمي (Systemic Design). سنستعرض كيف يمكن للمصممين الانتقال من تصميم «عناصر» أو «منتجات» معزولة (كالمباني)، إلى التصميم على مستوى «الأنظمة» (كالمجتمعات، والسياسات، والاقتصادات). للتسجيل ولمزيد من المعلومات: store.bawtaqah.com/ar/oZveODb

Web video #SystemsThinking Ontario, Shareback (i) #DubaiFuturesForum, (ii) Anticipation in PolyCrises w #RielMiller, (iii) #JailbreakingCanada w @doctorow. #MarkhanHussain #RobertoPires #AnnaBarkhudarova @ziyanhossain #AileenNandy mod @zaid___khan wiki.st-on.org/2026-01-12

Excited to talk about #SystemicDesign in context of Saudi Arabia and its societal transformation. We'll share about the practise and use some case examples related to #Vision2030. If you're in Riyadh, would love to connect. Register at: almashtal.typeform.com/to/AslLjuoA

As design assumes a broader role in shaping organizations, cities, and cultural systems, new ways of thinking and working are emerging💡 This talk introduces Systemic Design through three use cases connected to Saudi Vision 2030, offering insight into how designers and strategists engage with complexity, long-term change, and the relationships between interconnected systems. In collaboration with Contexture, the session brings a global perspective on Systemic Design and opens a conversation on how these approaches can be understood and applied within the local creative and cultural sectors. The session concludes with an open Q&A. Register here: almashtal.typeform.com/to/AslLjuoA مع توسع دور التصميم في تشكيل الجهات والمدن والأنظمة الثقافية، صارت تظهر طرق جديدة للتفكير والعمل💡 في هالجلسة بنتعرف على التصميم المنهجي من خلال ثلاث حالات مرتبطة برؤية السعودية 2030، ونستعرض كيف يتعامل المصممين والاستراتيجيين مع التعقيد، والتغييرات طويلة المدى، والعلاقات بين الأنظمة المترابطة. وبالتعاون مع Contexture، تقدّم الجلسة نظرة عالمية على التصميم المنهجي، وتفتح مساحة للنقاش حول فهم هالمقاربات وتطبيقها محليًا في القطاعات الإبداعية والثقافية. تُختتم الجلسة بنقاش مفتوح. @zaid___khan @SamahKamalmaz #المشتل #AlMashtal

This is more than just a fine review. @joeljmiller adds good illustrations not in my MAINTENANCE book, and he derives some Principles of Maintenance that I haven't attempted, to wit: "Entropy as baseline. The maintenance mind treats breakdown as normal, sees things as they actually behave over time, and plans for wear, aging, and decay, whereas the neglect mind indulges irrational optimism and acts surprised when things start breaking. "Stewardship as obligation. The maintenance mind owns long-term outcomes as a moral responsibility, whereas the neglect mind treats failure as aberration, defers consequences, and pushes responsibility onto others. "Craft over contempt. The maintenance mind understands upkeep as skilled work that confers competence, pride, and self-respect, whereas the neglect mind dismisses it as menial—beneath the attention of serious people. "Design for the long haul. The maintenance mind integrates design and upkeep—favoring simplicity, modularity, and interchangeable parts—whereas the neglect mind insulates creators from consequences and mistakes complexity for progress. "Learning through feedback. The maintenance mind adjusts through continuous information from problems as they manifest, whereas the neglect mind ignores signals that disrupt its plans or complicate its assumptions. "Authority at the point of failure. The maintenance mind confers agency on those closest to problems and trusts judgment formed through experience, whereas the neglect mind hoards permission at the top and prefers bureaucratic procedures that distance decision-makers from reality."

Web video of Pacing Changes: Seeing Living Systems as Rhythms for #SCiO Finland by @zaid___khan, hosted by #JanneJKorhonen . Shift in #SystemsThinking from default spatial-static to more processual-dynamic perspective, multiple layers, differing paces coevolving.com/blogs/index.ph…

OCADU Graduate Programs: Large turnout #SystemsThinking Ontario, @biancawylie and #SuLynnMyat on tech governance, mod @zaid___khan. First outline on Technology Assessments society shaping its desired future. Complemented by criticism of AI policies social inequities perpetuated

@_benjaminparry a magical imperfection indeed ;-)

@zaid___khan Thank you! Also realise I somehow garbled his name on posting...

Workshop on #Pacing Changes @iF_hamont, @StephHolko charting rhythms guided by @zaid___khan + @SamahKamalmaz. Technique hand-drawing on stacking transparent slides, overhead projector 1950s technology. Hosted by @CITM_Canada, small business invitees learned temporal perspective