Replying to LO23734 --
Dear Organlearners,
Bruno Martins Soares <bmartins.soares@mail.EUnet.pt> writes:
>I've just read your beatifully writen piece from your desert journey.
>You say that caring is the essencial attitude for learning and to
>a learning organization. I must agree. You couldn't have put it
>better. The thing is: caring... how? for what? how do we do that??
Thank you for your kind words.
Yes, not only is the "what" of caring important, but also its "how". The
"how-what" of caring points to the essentiality "becoming-being" of
creativity.
>I'm very skeptical towards pleas for caring people. And i say
>that even though I agreed with everything you said. Why am I
>skeptical? Because it's often misinterpreted.
I agree. I think that it is because we do not understand how caring is but
another act of creating.
>Before caring for others we must learn to care for ourselves.
>Caring for others before ouselves seems noble and kind, but
>it has several perverse effects. One of them, maybe the most
>important, is that it sacrifices the concept of giving as a whole.
Yes. Wholeness ("monadicity-associativity") also essential to creativity.
When we break the one (monad) into many rather than seeking the many
through the one-to-many-mapping (association) of self-organisation, we
destroy wholeness. Since we have impaired wholeness, we impair our
creativity. With such impaired creativity it is difficult, if not
impossible, to respect the creativity of others. Caring for other people
is to assist them to develop their own creativity.
>Actually, we're much more likely to betray our feelings than
>our feelings betraying ourselves. Our feelings ARE ourselves
>And we learned very well to shut them up as inconviniences
>and when we do that, we shut ourselves up.
Yes. We close ourselves with respect to our feelings. We do it because
others find in our feelings a way to destroy us. But since openness is
also an essentiality of creativity, by reducing our openness we impair our
own creativity and not only their creativity as we intended.
>We do not care, At, we do not give, because we forgot how to feel.
>We very carefully and effortly forgot how to feel. It's seemingly
>very useful and rationally makes a lot of sense. We do not feel,
>therefore we do not hurt. Others and ourselves.
I am of opinion that we try to suppress our feelings because we do not
know how to work with them, both within ourselves and when revealing them
to each other. Feelings are entropic forces. Suppressing them lead to
other entropic forces (through Onsager cross inductions). Some of them we
cannot even identify as feelings, yet they exist. They have disastrous
consequences in a negative state of mind.
>When I look for rhythm in communication as I have for the past
>weeks with your help, Organlearners, I'm also looking for feeling.
I can understand it from my point of view. One way in which I understand
it, is the following.
The primordial rhythm is that of entropy production as Leo has pointed out
so beautifully. Entropy production begins with entropic forc-flux pairs.
Feelings are an entropic force. Thus feelings contribute very much to the
rythm in communication, especially the rate at which rythms in it change.
The beating of the heart is a fine model to understand this. The beating
is regular when in a state of rest. Now, without any physical excercise,
the beating can still change dramatically by the feelings which we have.
It can be accelerated by fear into frenzy or retarded by happiness into a
trance.
>How many of us is really willing to feel? How many of you?
>Can you risk it?
We can risk it when we can deal with it through constructive creativity.
But to create constructively is not possible without liveness, wholeness,
sureness, fruifulness, otherness and openness. It is whhen we have too
little of any of them when we fear taking the risk to deal with feelings.
>Can we risk it? Is it ok to feel sad, angry, raging, reveangeful,
>envious, resentful, hateful, scared, hurt? You tell me...
I have such feelings every day. They emerge because of destructive
creativity, my own as well as that of others. I seldom tell about them,
except when I imbed them in a rich picture.
They exist and in that sense they are OK. In this sense I need to know
about all of them. In this sense I need the dialogue to know all of them
in all of us. I do not know you fellow learners feel about this.
But when they have to indicate the status of our creativity, they are not
OK. They indicate a destructive rather than a constructive creativity.
Destructive creativity is not OK. In fact, many people find it so horrible
that they cannot even think of creativity as something not completely
constructive.
>You tell me: should we care?
What greater relief is there when somebody says:
"Don't panick, I have taken care of it for you".
Care is shown in the doing, but caution in the warning. Yet precaution is
allied with caring while prudence goes with caution.
Circumspection is watchfull observation and systems thinking so as to
strengthen caring and avoid the timidity of caution
When the solicitude of caring disappears, it results in the anxiety for
the self preservation at all costs.
Caring requires responsibility tempered with experience and oversight. But
without acting timely, responsibility becomes wariness in the hour of
need.
Last, but not the least, caring comes from the Old English word "caru".
This word meant "to take a person with you to some destination". It is for
this reason that an automobile had also been called a car, but not a one
seater contraption on en engine like a motorbike.
In a LO each member takes all its members to a destination which all of
them have agreed upon after circumspection.
You tell me: what will happpen when we do not care.
With caring and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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