Whole Ways of Being and Learning LO24982

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 06/27/00


Replying to LO24978 --

Dear Organlearners,

Lana Choi alias Alternative Energy <ecospirit@mail.com> writes:

>I wrote this way back at the end of May...perhaps it may
>clarify where I'm coming from. I didn't submit it because it
>was VERY LONG (!!!) and with the rapid evolution of our
>dialogue on here, I gradually felt the need to sit back and listen.
>However, I am submitting it now in response to At's recent
>post (Our LO Dialogue Here LO24944 [complex]). Perhaps it
>will help the two of us (and hopefully others?) in understanding
>one another better.

Greetings Lana,

You never need to apologise (as you did at the end of your contribution)
about the length of it for me. I will make time to read it, even in the
25th hour of the day!

I am very happy that you did mail your contribution. I am now sure that
you are not only aware of wholeness, but that your are also evolving in
wholeness -- the being and becoming of wholeness. I will say something
more at the end.

Your contribution reminds me of what we call in chemistry a "synthon" --
an ultra-marathon synthesis. A synthon is a sequence of many, many
reactions (often more than a hundred) in the laboratory to produce a
complex compound from simple substances. This complex compound is more
than often one which has been identified in some living organism. The
challenge of a synthon is to reproduce/imitate with human intelligence
what nature has produced with its own innate intelligence, seemingly
effortless. Relatively few chemists ever attempt a synthon. One of the
reasons is that it challenge their being-becoming to wholeness too much.
And those few who have successfully completed a synthon have acquired a
remarkable disposition towards wholeness.

Two weeks ago we had once again here in South Africa the yearly event
called the Comrades. It is a ultra-marathon in the true sense of the word.
It is held between the cities Durban and Pietermaritzburg in
Kwa-Zulu-Natal. The distance is close to 90 kilometers along a curving,
up-down route. It commemorates the South African soldiers who died in
Europe during WWI. Almost 25 000 runners participated this year. They age
from 18 years upwards to eighty years. They come from all walks of life. A
couple of hundred of them have complete more than twenty Comrades races.

The fore-runners complete the marathon in less than six hours. The
"competitionalists" call them winners. But actually everyone of that tens
of thousands of runners who complete the Comrades is a winner. Why?
Because it requires utmost courage and endurance to complete this
ultra-marathon. It requires the mind to take control of a body which
seemingly cannot go forward any more. It requires comrades to encourage
each other not to give up. Comrades, but no outsiders, may even carry one
another to the winning line should they have enough free energy left over
to do that.

Now listen very, very carefully. Out of those twenty five thousand runners
few, if any, will ever say to anything negative to any other runner like
"You are a fool. Get out of the race. Your will not last. You run with
the wrong gear. Your are unfit because you are too fat." Why not? Even
though the Camrades race is only one day every year, the Comrades is one
of the most remarkable manifestations of a Learning Organisation I know
of. The five disciplines manifest themselves, although very unusual, with
remarkable clarity here.

>One doesn't need to be an Olympic OrgLearner to contribute
>here. Otherwise, that would defeat the whole purpose of
>learning organizations. If this list is only about cultivating top
>strata elite OrgLearner practitioners, and if such people are
>not able to deal with mundane questions or comments from
>new learners like me (superficially or at a deeper level)--or at
>least allow people like me to co-exist and maybe find dialogues
>with other newcomers or 'lower-level' learners (??)--then there
>must be a problem. Essentially, the notion of lifelong learning
>(which to me is a central tenet of organizational learning) goes
>right out the window. So thank you Andrew for your humorous
>words and gesture towards inclusion.

In my mind I often picture this lovely LO-dialogue as the Cyber equivalent
of the Comrades. Lana, you are a Comrade. Everyone who keeps on being
listed to this LO-dialogue is a Comrade. Everyone who makes a comeback to
the list is a Comrade.

>It [...learning...] seems to be a challenging place for adults,
>but something children seem to do more naturally. Perhaps
>this is partly why they learn faster, more easily, and more
>deeply. Their eagerness, unpreparedness, and enthusiasm
>opens up deeper learning. Once they start switching into
>automatic mode too often, or move into the 'I know this already'
>attitude, the ability to learn fully and sincerely begins to wane.
>I don't think it's permanently lost, but it may perhaps become
>harder to rediscover over time.

It reminds me of taking other people also to the deserts. There are two
kinds. The one kind goes for one and only one kind of thing. They
"switch-on" when that kind of thing comes in sight and "switch-off" when
it goes out of sight. No other kind of thing have that
"switch-on"/"switch-off" effect on them. However, sooner or later many
other kinds of things begin to irritate them until they begin to behave
very negatively so that the tour usually ends in a disaster. I may very
well call them the LEM-kind. (LEM stands for the Law of Excluded Middle).

The other kind of tourist explores all kinds of things. They are always
"switched-on". Sometimes they talk one's ears off one's head. Sometimes
they revert into a deep silence for many hours. Whatever they do, every
minute with them is filled with joy because they never stop learning. A
tour with them usually ends in a feast. I may very well call them the
AND-kind. (AND is contrary to the "either...or..."of LEM.)

I myself have learnt a most valuable lesson. It is impossible for me to
tell before I have taken a person to the desert whether that person is of
the LEM-kind or the AND-kind. It does not matter how well I know that
person before the tour. Only the whole of the desert experiences will
uncover whether that person is a LEM-kind or an AND-kind of person. This
lesson helped me to understand a deep truth -- never judge or criticize an
experience before it has happened.

Early this morning a friend from Port Elizabeth phoned me. He had taken a
visitor (an internationally well known collector of plants) from abroad
on a tour through the deserts of Namibia. The tour proved this person to
be of the LEM-kind and thus it ended in a disaster. I could not have
predicted this outcome. My friend knew I would appreciate knowing that
this reknown person is of the LEM-kind so as to be cautious myself.

>I am seeking spaces for different modes of expressing on LO.
>My personal way of learning and growing is to express my
>personal truth first (even if it is a contention with the dominant
>paradigm), in order to allow the healing and balance to come
>after, then be able to hear better and more clearly the expressions
>of others, and then, collectively find constructive, practicable, and
>holistic solutions, or ways of being/doing. I am therefore learning
>so much from all this dialoguing and occasional challenges
>between folks, and around the ongoing struggle for holistic
>balance.

Lana, some twenty years ago during extensive studies in formal logic, I
discovered that since the days of Aristotles formal logic had too much
being and too little becoming in it. Formal logic deals with truth in
terms of two beings of truth: True and False. Formal logic has no act
like "become true"! Since that discovery I have become very wary in
claiming "X is true" since for me it follows only after "X becomes true".
I can honestly say that in my own life some "X becomes true" took more
than fifty years before I could say with confidence "X is true".

For me to claim, even with confidence, "X is true" whereas for another
learner it is still "X becomes true", is to endanger that learner's
authentic learning seriously whenever the "entropy production" which it
may cause is not guided by the seven essentialities.

Mentioning the seven essentialities, they compell me to quote the
following seven "sentences" in your contribution:

Liveness
>Truly deep and transformative learning, which can challenge
>all the personal truths that one has ever known, probably feels
>like standing on the edge of a steep cliff.

Sureness
>My personal learning style is to have a 'safe' environment in
>which to fully share, explore, and contribute, without feeling
>like I might be undermined due to my inadequate experience.

Wholeness
>I am therefore learning so much from all this dialoguing and
>occasional challenges between folks, and around the ongoing
>struggle for holistic balance.

Fruitfulness
>Organizational Learning involves paying attention to, or
>allowing space for, the voices that are calling out for change
>and seeing how we might collectively (as a potential learning
>organization culture) create better ways and find a balance.

Spareness
>To me, a mentally handicapped person who has Down's
>Syndrome is just as glorious, beautiful and wise at their
>essence as a more able person.

Otherness
>Variety is important. So is dialogue, balance, and a million
>other things

Openness
>True learning, to me, is about finding the courage and
>willingness to be open in the moment--body, mind, heart,
>and spirit -- and discovering things anew.

How can a person learn about wholeness, i.e deepen in wholeness?

There are a number of ways. One way is to always go for fresh experiences.

Another way is to use of the other six essentialities actively like you
are doing and which I have quoted above. Thank you very much for setting
us such a wonderful example.

Let us bear these seven essentialties in mind thinking about what you have
written as follows:

>Truly deep and transformative learning, which can challenge
>all the personal truths that one has ever known, probably feels
>like standing on the edge of a steep cliff. There's a sense of
>complete uncertainty--feeling at risk and vulnerable. It can be
>scary. It could even mean a type of death--egoistically, spiritually,
>or even in actual physical terms (heart attack from shock, perhaps?).

Perhaps the most serious thing which people become aware of when
complexifying through authentic learning, is uncertainty. Should that
uncertainty take control of them, they will stop evolving towards
"singularity of complexity" in their personality. That uncertainty will
take control over them if they are ignorant about what gives rise to that
uncertainty. Uncertainty for me, as I have once explained, has seven
dimensions, one for each essentiality.

Consider wholeness. If the person is ignorant to wholeness, that person
will have a complete uncertainty relative to wholeness. If consciousness
of wholeness have emerged in that person, i.e the person is not ignorant
any more to wholeness, that person will have a partial uncertainty with
respect to wholeness as soon as that person is not willing to grow
digestively further in wholeness. An awareness to complexifying wholeness
is almost the opposite of the uncertainty with respect to wholeness.

>In an earlier post, I prefaced 'ways of learning' with the word
>holistic because I find most people (including myself!) assume
>learning is largely a mental or cerebral activity. I am interested
>in whole ways of learning and being. I strive to remind myself
>of that, so I don't get too stuck in the intellectual analytical
>realms.

Lana, I was laughing aloud when reading this. Making use of their
"cerebral activity" is exactly how people want to understand "entropy
production" too. It has to be experienced primarily through the five main
senses and innumerous minor senses (collectively called the "sixth
sense"). The role of the mind ("cerebral acivity") is to guide these
experiences through the increasingly complex levels of our spirituality by
way of constructive creativity. Thus, sooner or later, the person will
become aware how learning, for example, is one of the many manifestations
of "entropy production".

>Why else do children as young as 7 and 8 commit suicide
>due to either bullying they receive from peers or even teachers,
>or because their poor performance?

Lana, when I read a sentence like this, anger begin to boil in me for our
society at large, not excluding me. I include myself because whatever I do
self or trying to convince others to do, it seems as if I cannot make the
minutest difference in the plight of our children. Jesus said that should
we cause them any plight, it is better for us to commit suicide -- to
remove ourselves permanently from society by invoking LEM thoroughly on
ourselves.

>PS -- Some points about history. In this post, I've listed the
>times in which the people, whom I've quoted, lived. However,
>as I mentioned once before the history that gets painted is
>often an incomplete distortion of more whole pictures. I got
>Buckminster Fuller's dates from Encarta Online.

Thank you for your notes on this extraodinary person who struggled so much
with the destructive and constructive creativity in him. Few people, even
in his own country, know about him. In chemistry a fantastic class of
artificial compounds have been named after him -- the fullerenes! Try to
read something on them and their "geodesic" structure!!

With care 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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