Musica Humanis. LO24063

From: ACampnona@aol.com
Date: 02/25/00


For PP and JZ

Dear learners,

'I believe in the sun, even when it doesn't shine.
I believe in love, even when I don't feel it.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.'

-- Inscription on the wall of a cellar in Cologne where some Jews remained
hidden for the entire duration of the war. (Yosl Rakover Talks to God)

When Pythagoras was walking past a brazier's shop, very possibly on the
way home from 'afternoon tea and scones' ;-) one sweet afternoon near
Athens he heard a 'pleasing noise' inside and examined the cause of the
'melody' to discover, as we all now know that it was the differing weight
of the hammers 'causing' it. The inquisitive old Greek had sensed a 'deep
connection' in otherwise 'unconnected' parts of reality, so went straight
(linearly) home and 'played' with weights and lengths of strings and
discovered definite linkage between 'prime number' and musical HARMONY.

Funny how new links can be forged?

But enough of 'hard' stuff!

Pythagorean theory also held that in addition to 'musica instrumetalis'
(the sounds of flutes and harps and the like) there was also 'musica
mundana' the music of the 'celestial spheres', and much closer to home
there was the 'musica humanis' which arises from the resonance between
'body and soul'.

Soft stuff!

'Musica Humanis'

Perhaps this is what the CEO of Scania was 'plugging into' when he
'-listened for the Music?'

A beautiful expression, just like a flower. Not ever seen it growing in
these LO fields I have ploughed.

Reminds me of the beautiful 'Homo Sapiens Amans' of Prof. Humberto
Maturana.

If anybody who thinks that they 'facilitate' for people both 'body and
soul' and wants to cross reference what Plato as 'per' Socrates 'said'
about the soul it might bring valuable insight to the soothing of it in
any time frame. Just to tempt you ;-) he offers the 'view' or 'prospect'
that the soul has two parts, one a 'master' and the other a 'slave'. It
makes a rich picture.

Instead now though I want to express the idea, sketch out a little an idea
that AESTHETIC appreciation of landscape is fundamentally connected with a
human capacity to live and organise his thoughts and himself thereby.
'Emotional responses to - environments may possess adaptive features.' '-
Our instinctive and intuitive/aesthetic reactions to the world (around us)
could not have evolved if, on average, they had contributed negatively to
our survival'. (Barrow)

We are it seems supremely adapted to 'choose' our living environments, the
obvious frustration of and in which is in simple 'common sense' terms
probably the major 'engine' of human mental diseases like 'depression' and
'anxiety' in modern workplaces, hence losing our organisations billions of
units of currency in lost profitability.

I recall the Dhali Lama once saying, 'Pity not to measure gross national
happiness instead of gross national product : - )'

I was with a nice guy once a few years ago who owned a factory or two, high
tech' products for the bio-medical industry. We had shared some time 'on all
fours', working on ground-floor stuff like proverbial kids with about twenty
other CEO's and friends, we stood later that evening in the hotel lounge
sipping drinks as one does, perusing the 'art' on the walls of the country
hotel. One image attracted him very much, so he asked me if I knew the
artist. I did not but it was not a 'master work', just a nice landscape from
the nineteenth century in the style of John Constable. The talk went on as to
'why' he liked it. I asked him, 'John, what happens to you in front of that
painting?'
'Well, Andrew if that painting were on my wall I would spend a lot of time in
it.'
'But John, you silly old thing, you can't walk into something a few square
feet large and flat that is suspended upon a wall!'
'Yeh, well you know what I mean. And I don't understand something else about
that kind of painting... I want you to tell me if you can, why there is
nearly always a figure walking down a lane or pathway into the distance?'
'Well John, I reckon it is to encourage you in the idea that 'he' is you.'
John had that smile that is really a smirk when someone sees you have scored
an own goal.
'So John, what is it that you like so much in that painting that you want to
go into it?'
'Trees, water, peaceful areas...'
'Sounds like you are going to build a house there...'

Dinner is served....

Primitive man was around about ten thousand times longer in his incarnation
than you or me as per modern man's incarnation.
If you want to test your personal Fred Flinstone credentials just examine
your 'deeper feelings' when someone parks their car in 'your' space, works
every time.
Primitive man looking for a space to dwell could not speak with an estate
agent (fortunate times?), he did not take soil samples or speak to local
crime officers. No. But rather like a modern entrepreneur (?) he surveyed the
landscape, the field with the glance of the proverbial eye, saw the niche and
set Wilma to pack.

Intuition?

Recent data I 'received' points to the notion that very successful
managers and executives make decisions more by 'gut reaction' in strict
increased proportion to the maxima of hard data given to them. So, the
more 'hard data' the softer the 'instrument' of choice. Wisdom?

Peep. Peep. Peep.

Birds 'explore' potential sites for personal habitation according to a
variety of sensing in woodlands. Ornithologists tell that the particular
site is chosen on the basis of abundance of and patterning (fractalisation
recognition?) to tree branching.

So it is likely that we too respond to environments through some inner
sense toward easily accessible 'hardwired' close coupled data and cues.

Mr. Constable the painter of country scenes taught me that one should
always consider the sky as being the 'giver' of overall structure, light
and composition to landscape painting. A subject I would like to return to
one day in connection with polyphony of clouds and people;-)

Talk of rivers, rivers that come and go. We have been learning the most
beautiful things about learning from river pathways. Beautiful eloquence.
And right now a nation is decimated by the power of flooding in East
Africa.

On one level a man might decide to set up home in a landscape that
contains a river and stream. But beyond that, deeper in the 'gut' reaction
to environment a 'wiser' man would spend a longer while, perhaps a cycle
of seasons apprehending the cloud patterns. In scientific tests children
choose pictures of savanna environments in which to live, but then older
percipients prefer deciduous woodland for example. Experience of life
lived modifies the most primitive preference in this case for the
landscape of our ancient forebears. When pictures are modified in such a
way that even experienced viewers have to rely on implicit choice they
chose savanna once again.

I wonder of anyone more experienced than me in organisational life could
extend the 'cues' of what is so appealing about that landscape to live in.
Here are some. Scattered cover (trees and bushes) for shade and cover for
somewhere to hide, interspersed with grasses, long vistas with undulations
offering good aerial views, orientation and way-finding, low and near to
ground level food sources.

Point is, man has become incredibly 'whole body sensitive' through
adaptation to selection to habitat, work and domicile.
 
Now that 'path-way' in the landscape painting which John like so much
seemed to turn and disappear round a bend. This represents the other side
of the coin. The fascination with risk and danger as to what might be
hidden around that bend, it could be fatal to walk into that part of the
'picture' - but that is, I reckon another reason why we are so keen to
learn.

The aesthetic condition when active and incarnate as in the artist's soul
becomes a kind of model or exemplar for the entrepreneur and discoverer.

How many people have ever wondered if there was ecological and scientific
connection between the raging sunsets of JMW Turner and the pollution of
the skies over industrialized England? What are the connections with
fascination of and in paintings of shipwrecks, natural catastrophes and
our current pre-occupations with war films, horror films, and pornography?
Has it not something to do with a need and urge to investigate the unknown
from a staging point of relative safety? Is that not partly what a LO is
in many a form?

One of the most powerful metaphors in the currently deforming landscape of
organisational life that I think comes out of these reflections is the
twin need to 'see without being seen'. Even in the desert the hermit must
have a cave for refuge. Frank Lloyd Wright laid particular importance to
creating canopies and refuges within public buildings.

Aesthetics are a dynamic interplay of preferences formed from instinct and
experience.

'The planner is my shepherd
He maketh me to walk; through dark tunnels
And underpasses he forces me to go.
He maketh concrete canyons tower above me.
By rivers of traffic he maketh me walk.
He knocketh down all that is good, he maketh straight curves.
He maketh of the city a wasteland and a car park.'
(Mike Harding)

When I was a little boy I used to attend community groups set in a small
church hall, it was a haven of security with a small church yard,
outbuildings and so on. While I have grown up it grew into dereliction and
went unused and the heroin addicts and alcoholics from the hostel when it
closes just around the corner wandered for years into the graveyard and
the surrounds, sitting with the 'stones' of the departed.

There were so many 'infected needles' in that little church space that the
army took a week to clear an area of not more than a few hundred square
meters. I cannot say how mixed up I feel about places like that. Then some
words danced over the horizon,

Leaves falling
Lie on one another;
The rain beats the rain.

Sometimes I hear the 'talk' of the Goth at the door, he who comes and goes
from wild place to peaceful sanctuary, one minute here and next minute there.
' Like the sparrow, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another
-Into the dark winter from which he had emerged.'

'All divisions end in depth'. That is the philosophical basis of all art
theory.
I think we all play out our lives somewhere in the fields between
'hardwiring' and 'loose couplings'.
Therein lies unity and I think utility in this 'virtual' place.

Best wishes,

Andrew Campbell

-- 

ACampnona@aol.com

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