Told LO26860

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 06/22/01


Replying to LO26834 --

Dear Organlearners,

Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes.

>Although by far my greatest passion in subjects
>of the academy is Fine Art. I think it is true to say
>that I rarely reference to art here.

Greetings dear Andrew,

True. But the problem is ours. What we do not learn authentically, we
cannot create a passion for. And what we do not have a passion for, we
cannot talk about.

>Art has the capacity to unify all the other subjects.
>It is the highest attainment in expression of mankind.

I think of it somewhat differently. When any expression of any person has
reached its "highest attainment" (using your words), then it becomes art.
Sadly, I think it is the debate rather then dialogue on this "highest
attainment" which makes it so difficult to learn what is art.

As for myself, I learn about art by creating self in many ways.
Furthermore, along the way I began to learn how much the 7Es tell me what
this "highest attainment" is about, namely to increase in each of the 7Es.
Thus in the sense of increasing wholeness ("unity-associaitivity") I agree
with your "Art has the capacity to unify all the other subjects."

Art may have in this sense the capacity, but should science not care in
the same sense for "increasing wholeness", I doubt whether art and science
will unify. Einstein and Later Boehm worked very hard at giving science an
"increasing wholeness", but one swallow cannot make the summer.

>If I am wrong someone will please tell me;-)
>...science at its best is an art...would anyone
>say that art at it's best is a science, except in
>the highest consilience of sentence by Einstein
>or a passage by Leonardo?
>
>Mmmmm ( get your head down Andrew;-)

I myself would not like science and art to become exactly the same. But I
do believe they operate on the same phenomena!

In my present understanding I think of an artist as one step ahead of the
scientist. I will not dare to say whom the scientist is one step ahead ;-)
With tongue in the cheeck I will also say that the task of the scientist
is to clean up the mess made by the artist, but never to undo the works of
art themselves. These works of art illuminates the path which the
scientist can follow best.

Perhaps you are saying that in some persons there can be both the artist
and scientist, each excelling. In such case the artist and the scientist
within the person are still not the same, although the harmony between
these two faculties in that person becomes a blessing for humankind. The
terrible thing about modern institutionalised education is that it makes
this emergence of both the artist and scientist in a student almost
impossible.

>At, one quality I continually notice in Fine
>Artworks is that each one is fresh, from the
>same hand, but somehow in each the mind
>seems shifted.

Andrew, these are very deep words indeed. In my own words I will say that
I am observing the Law of Singularity of Complexity (LSC) here. (The LSC
is one of the ways in which the 7Es manifest themselves.) To know tacitly
the LSC is one thing. But to have the capacity to express it in fine art,
requires immense efforts.

>I publicly invite anyone who practices or reads
>into these things to share with us how this
>beautiful living of metaphor, a living made into a
>metaphor, a doing of the knowing, a walking
>of the talking, an innering of an outering, relates
>to their traditions espoused by people like the late
>Dr. David Bohm and the late Dr.Francisco Varela
>-both subjects very close to me these days. I am
>thirsty for this dialogue.

I hope I understand you correctly, namely how the "doing of the knowing"
of people relates to their "traditions" on the other side of the relation.
(In other words, we have to focus on a binary relation here.) I will
respond first to this dialogue.

Among my own people the Afrikaners there is often a conflict between this
"doing of the knowing" and the "traditions". Especially during the years
of apartheid this conflict became dramatically clear in certain persons
like Nico Smith and Beyers Naude. Their "doing of the knowing" diverged
sharply from what most Afrikaners considered as "traditions".

However, sixty years (<1899) before apartheid and now ten years after
apartheid (2001), there would have been and now is no such sharp conflict.
In other words, it is not so much the relation between "doing of the
knowing" of these persons and the "traditions" of their people which
caused the conflict, but what apartheid did to this relation to deform it
into a conflict.

How did apartheid do it? Because apartheid was to a large extent the
opposite of "increasing wholeness", namely "breaking wholeness". The last
Prime Minister before apartheid was Jan Smuts. He was almost the
personification of "increasing wholeness"=holism. He lost the election to
the ideology of apartheid. Nelson Mandela was the first President after
apartheid. He is in a sense the personification of "increasing otherness".
He is not the president anymore and none of the present government are
able to take up the cause of "increasing otherness" as he did. Why?

Let us look again at Jan Smuts. He studied at Cambridge before the British
Boer War (BBW) 1899-1902. There he distinguished himself as one of the
brightest students of Cambridge ever. But he was not only a great
intellectual. He was also a great romantic. He came back to the Republic
of Transvaal as its attorney general. And soon afterwards BBW broke out.

The BBW was the first modern war giving an inclination what horrors WWI
and WWII would become. Smuts (without any military training!) soon became
a general in the Transvaal forces. The BBW shocked Smuts deeply in all his
spirituality. (It is not for me to tell what happened in the BBW. It is
documented by many, especially the British lady Emily Hobhouse.) It also
shocked almost every other Boer (Afrikaner) involved in the BBW to the
same extent.

Some Boere like Smuts, Herzog and Marais responded in a constructive
manner. After the BBW they had to pick up the maimned pieces and put them
back again in almost super human excertions. Smuts toiled constructively
on all walks of life to make the country normal again. But most
importantly, he also toiled on his inner world and this is how his
knowledge on holism took shape. The same with general Herzog who also
became a prime minister. In his case his tacit knowledge on "increasing
sureness" grew immensely. In the case of the "Dante or Goethe of the
Boere", namely Eugene Marais, his tacit knowledge on "increasing liveness"
grew immensely.

Others responded in a destructive manner. But most just waited for things
to become better by itself. Thus as the country became healed (broken,
deformed and static parts put together) again, they became "mildly
destructive" because their own expectations did not manifest. The effects
of WWI triggered them from placidity into discontent. Thus they began to
plan creating a future for themselves while using the benefits of Smuts'
"increasing wholeness", Herzog's "increasing sureness" and Marais'
"increasing liveness". The effects of WWII accelerated their efforts to
secure their own future with an ideology which they called apartheid.

The same thing is happening now after apartheid. Most people, even in the
ruling coalition (ANC, Communist Party and Trade Union) wait for things to
become better. And as the healing takes place, again far too slow and far
too little, their discontent is growing and thus they are slowly converted
to the destructive side rather than the constructive side of a Mandela.
They are beginning to plan in the direction of "all for the Africa of
Africans", i.e. panafricanism. Furthermore, because of what the Europeans
abroad are doing to them, they retaliate back at the European "settlers"
like the Afrikaners living with them, the majority for more than ten
generations.

In other words, what has happened since the BBW, has told what
is happening now again. Unless we can break the spiral of responding
to destructive creativity with destructive creativity. I firmly believe that
this spiral cannot be broken in any one country. It has to be broken
in every country. And not in a grand manner, but developing in an organic
manner wisened by love-agape:
organelle => cell => cells => organs => organisms
all of them LOs.

That is why I use up so much my free energy on especially our LO-dialogue
which will hopefully become more international moon by moon. Once
authentic LOs have emerged COMPREHENDING that they are LOs, the process of
authentic healing will accelerate.

To round up, the relation "doing of the knowing" and the "traditions" gets
into a conflict when too few people involved in this relation create
constructively. It is when the harmony between the becoming of some
individuals and the becoming of the rest of society gets disturbed.
Sometimes we want to blame the individauls and sometimes we want to blame
the rest of society.

However, and this I want to make very clear, the blaming of either the
individuals or the rest of society will bring us nowhere, except preparing
us for another conflict. The reason is, as I have tried to argue so many
times, is that blaming itself is destructive with as devastating outcome
the very displacement of authentic learning by enforcing rote (clone)
learning. This rote (clone) learning keeps the cycle going on from
conflict to conflict in the relations between "doing of the knowing" and
the "traditions". To break this cycle requires authentic learning.

The easiest place to begin is to look closely where children are learning
without a teacher interfering almost every minute. They might be
expressing art, exploring an examplar, playing a game or just talking
thoughts to each other. Please look and try to make sense out of what is
happening before your very eyes.

>>Andrew, last week our granddaugther Jessica
>>told me "Oupa(=Grandfather) you have to make
>>money so that I can visit England and tell Oom
>>(=uncle) Andrew what art we kids needs. I have
>>learned English well enough to tell him all."
>
>I am told.

And you have responded in a most gentlemanly manner.

Thank you Andrew.

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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