What I have learned of terrorism - Part 2. LO27210

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 09/17/01


Dear Organlearners,

Greetings to all of you.

To all victims of terrorism, we keep on embracing you in our hearts.

In Part 1 I described my own recollections on terrorism since childhood.
Let us now begin with:

Part 2. Terrorism, like apartheid did, exploits the weakness of present
civilization.

I will now report my own enquiring thoughts ("logoi") on terrorism as I
gradually learned to understand it better. I am not claiming that my
"logoi" are universally correct since it is merely my own opinion. But I
do want to stress that I tried to form my opinion in as universal context
as possible. My opinion is part of my world conception.

I also want to stress that my "logoi" were not preoccupied with only
terrorism. Since the early eighties, after having discovered that LEP has
material and mental complements and soon after that having studied Kuhn's
book on the nature of scientific revolutions, I began to search for
paradigmatic anomalies in all walks of present civilisation. The
incapacity of civilization to deal with terrorism is but one of many such
anomalies. Some other anomalies are: rote learning, information explosion,
global heating and pollution, loss of biodiversity, genetical engineering,
biochemical warfare, weapons of mass destruction, globally pandemic
diseases, the few extremely rich drifting away from the billions extremely
poor, radical fundamentalism, exponential growth of cults, etc.

While investigating these anomalies I became aware how much I needed
transdisciplinary thinking. This I have explained in previous
contributions on our LO-dialogue. I do not want to push myself in this
regard be citing each contribution. But I do realise your need for more
information. So if you want to learn more about "transdisciplinary
thinking" or any other topic which I mention in this contribution, do a
search with the advanced engine Google
< http://www.google.com/advanced_search > Type in the domain
"learning-org.com". If you get few or no hits, give Google a break. It
will use your request to update its data banks. After a few weeks your
search will retrieve much more information on what you are looking for.

Terrorists attacks were made on our country because of apartheid as
its ideology and policy. Trying to find a concise characterisation of
apartheid reveals only two things
(1) Apartheid had a different face for each social, religious and political
. group.
(2) Those who suffered because of it call it a crime against humanity.

It confuses our peoples that apartheid had so many faces. But for me this
is a symptom of the many attempts from the many viewpoints to articulate
some vital, yet extremely complicated, tacit knowing. The many who
suffered hurt in all walks of life have described their hurt. Everybody
understands it and accepts it. But the victims cannot describe exactly
what caused the hurt, except for calling it apartheid. So what is
apartheid?

I think that we should bear in mind that, driven by fear, the electorate
voted in 1948 with a small margin against Jan Smuts and his
holism="increasing wholeness". Apartheid was wrong because it based the
development of our country on impairing wholeness by fragmenting almost
every walk of life. It is most curious that today, merely fifty years
later, few white South Africans and even far less black South Africans
know anything of Smuts' holism and especially his thesis that holism is
the driving force of all evolution: geological, biological, social and
even spiritual. I think that it is the lack of this knowledge which makes
it so difficult for them to see from so many viewpoints the same face of
apartheid and to pinpoint why it is a crime against humanity.

Wholeness is but one of the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity) for
me. The other six are liveness, sureness, fruitfulness, spareness,
otherness and openness. To advance in our creativity we have to ensure
that each of these 7Es has to increase continually. Only then is authentic
learning as the first emergence from creativity possible for us. But
should one or more of the 7Es become fixed, our authentic learning will
become stagnated. Should one or more of the 7Es become impaired, authentic
learning will become replaced by rote learning. Idiosyncrasies of the past
will become more important than seeking the unknown in the future.

Terrorism is wrong because it also impairs one or more of the 7Es to
achieve its goal. In the many faces of terrorism for me which I have
described in Part 1, its main aim is to impair the essentiality liveness
("becoming-being"). Liveness is ended by death or impaired by maiming the
"becoming" of its victims. Terrorism finds its victims in those people
unaware to fruitfulness ("connect-beget"). Terrorism employs the lack of
sureness ("identity-categoricity") among those who love the victims to
instill fear in them for the unknown. Terrorism uses this fear to impair
openness so that the whole nation becomes rigid with equilibrium. This is
how terrorism gains control.

If apartheid and terrorism merely had to do with impairing the 7Es, then
both would only be theoretical wrongs. However, the 7Es are needed to
guide us in using free energy wisely to produce entropy with it. Both
apartheid and terrorism become practical wrongs when they used sources of
free energy to cause destructive outcomes which the one or more impaired
7Es then cannot prevent. Apartheid used as free energy the taxes paid from
all citizens, black and white. The subsequent entropy production crumbled
our society. The terrorist attack on the USA the 11th of September used
hundreds of thousands of litres of jet fuel as source of free energy. The
entropy production crumbled the two WTC towers.

The word "apartheid" consists of two words, "apart"=apart and
"-heid"=hood. The suffix -hood originally meant something pertaining to
the head. This is exactly what an ideology requires -- heads without
hearts to execute it. Because wholeness was so seriously impaired by both
apartheid and sanctions, authentic learning was gradually replaced by rote
learning. People on both sides of apartheid began to follow the existing
articulations of their leaders rather than learn authentically with
enquiring thoughts ("logoi").

The word terrorist is derived from the Latin word "terreo"=frighten. Let
us also keep in mind the Greek word "theerion"=beast. It was used
metaphorically to refer to any abominable person who, by committing
atrocious deeds, commands people through fear. The apostle John uses this
word "theerion" almost 40 times in Revelations while the word is used only
8 times in the rest of the NT and then not metaphorically. In Rev 1:17 and
2:10 the apostle John and every other reader of Revelations (Apocalypse)
are warned specifically not to let fear for the apocalypse take control. I
believe that the warning goes far wider than that. It also applies to the
present crisis.

The western countries became intuitively aware of this "doomsday"
potentiality of apartheid because the apartheid government used vast
sources of free energy to accomplish their goals. Apartheid was mentioned
in the same breath as Nazism and Fascism. But they did not became aware of
this in the terrorism against apartheid because the terrorists could not
muster the same free energy sources in the countries from which they
operated. They were merely a sort of "handy nuisance" in their own covert
(under cover) operations.

Consequently these countries began to employ sanctions (impaired
wholeness) on an increasing scale to destroy apartheid, but not to destroy
terrorism against apartheid too. In fact, they actually gave shelter and
support to some of the terrorists. Furthermore, because relatively few
terrorist incidents in the western countries happened (excluding Ireland
and Spain), few westerners had vivid experiences of it so as to gain
authentic knowledge on terrorism. The only exception was Israel. It was
the one country who did not shelter terrorists against apartheid. Perhaps
this is the reason why Sionism is now wrongly labelled as apartheid.
Because of its endless battle against terrorism, it is now self being
called a terrorist country.

However, since the nineties the situation changed. While apartheid and
terrorism against it in South Africa were hitting the dust, terrorists
with other causes elsewhere in the world began to engineer bigger
projects. They used more free energy and better plans to upset the lives
of more people in a worse degree. This gave them the confidence with which
they began to operate against those very powerful western countries which
they feared in the past. They even began to operate against powerful
eastern countries. Thus they gained in tacit knowledge that they operate
in a domain which is not covered by the present standards of civilisation
of these powerful countries, whether western or eastern. These countries
are not powerful to them anymore. They are merely capitalistic countries
having vast weaknesses.

Should I explain to these terrorists how they are operating from a domain
not covered by capitalism as the paradigm of these countries which made
them powerful, I could almost imagine how they will nod their heads in
agreement. But I am a teacher who have to work with the whole reality and
not merely the imaginative part of it. These terrorists will understand
little of my explanation, if anything. They merely have found by trial end
error a domain to operate from, hurting capitalism in any facet where it
is weak.

The terrorists cannot comprehend this domain and its relation to the
paradigm of capitalism. But neither can most people from the powerful
countries do so. Terrorists want to hurt the capitalistic countries and
they found out how to do it effectively. But so also want most people from
the powerful countries to retaliate where it hurts most. The terrorists
know for sure that they are hurting many "capitalists", but they are
oblivious to exactly whom they hurt and to what extend. Likewise the
governments of the powerful countries know for sure that their
retaliations are hurting many "terrorists", but they are oblivious to
exactly whom and what extend the "collateral casualties" are.

The terrorists consider their goal ("being") to be holy, but are
unconcerned that their means ("becoming") are evil. In other words, they
are ignorant to the very essentiality liveness ("becoming-being") in their
fight against capitalism. However, how many people in the powerful
countries are not ignorant to liveness? How many seek for a congruency in
the means and goal?

As a teacher I am also worried whether people in these powerful countries
will also understand my explanations. Through the years I have become
deeply under the impression of what I call the LRC (Law of Requisite
Complexity). The LRC stands between people aware of any authentic problem
(even terrorism) and their solution for that problem. To solve the
authentic problem the LRC tells that they will have to shift to a new,
complexer lever [level?] so as to perceive the problem correctly and thus
find a correct solution to it. Even Einstein himself was deeply aware that
the thinking which perceives an authentic problem is not sufficient to
solve it too. In the case of terrorism as authentic problem the shift is
so vast that it compels a paradigm shift.

Should these powerful countries attempt to solve the problem of terrorism
from the very paradigm by which they became powerful and also became aware
of the problem, they will only become part of the problem. Even worse, the
destructive immergences which crept down from Central Africa more than
forty years ago so that even South Africans now have to face them day by
day, will become part of their everyday lives. Like South Africa, they
will spend increasingly more on both security measures and fighting
terrorism.

The LRC also entails that when a requisite level of complexity has been
reached for the next constructive emergence to happen and that step is
then not taken, some future bifurcation will result into a destructive
immergence. It is like a woman who has to give birth, but who also has an
obstruction. It can become fatal to both the woman and baby if corrective
measures are not taken.

I still remember vividly the day after two German friends and I came back
from a desert excursion. We were talking, not noticing what the TV was
showing. Suddenly my wife was shooting: "Look, the Berlin wall is
falling." The attentions of the Germans became nailed to the screen. Each
muttered frequently: "Mein Gott, ich kann es nicht glauben". I think that
millions who saw the attack on the America on 11 September did the same,
muttering frequently: "My God, I cannot believe it."

The fall of the Berlin wall signalled the end of communism. Would this not
have happened, South Africa would not have dismantled apartheid. Terrorist
attacks in South Africa would merely have increased to apocalyptic
proportions. However, since that day I always pondered over what has to
fall to signal the end of capitalism. The anomalies under communism
multiplied and grew until the Berlin wall fell. The anomalies under
capitalism also multiplied and grew and now the WTC towers have fallen.

I often prayed that, if possible at all, whatever should fall should
happen as peacefully as the fall of the Berlin wall. But I knew that I had
to reckon with the asymmetry of all evolution. Creation does not back
track its steps, nor does it follow the same path twice. This is the
nature of irreversibility. Millions of citizens in communistic countries
were killed by their regimes. Meanwhile few citizens in capitalistic
countries were killed by their democratic elected governments. The Berlin
wall fell peacefully while people laughed and wept with joy. The WTC
towers fell horrendously while people cried and fled from hurt. Few people
wanted to hunt down their communistic leaders afterwards. Many people are
now conducting a hunt for the terrorists.

Perhaps the fall of the WTC towers will not signal the end of capitalism
because of its very asymmetry with the fall of the Berlin wall. This
asymmetry may cause many people to lose sight of the evolutionary ath
which I think we have to follow. Thus I want to stress the following of my
own understanding. It is of far greater importance not merely to ask the
identity of the terrorists, but to know how did people become terrorists
in the first place. It is of far greater importance not merely to hunt
down the rest of the terrorists who was responsible for the fall of the
WTC towers, but to bring them to wise justice without hurting any innocent
person.

Our late president Nelson Mandela is one of the few outstanding statesmen
of the 20th century. Why? He loves all people of whatever kind. He
dignifies those who have fallen or been left behind. He holds the rule of
law as precious. But did you know that this very man was planning some
forty years ago a terrorist attack of magnitude, relative to the size of
our country, like the terrorist attack on 11 September on the USA. Thank
God, for him and for us, he was caught in the nick of time. Therefor, when
brought to justice, he could not be executed like other terrorists who
actually committed their vile deeds. Our laws against terrorism had just
that little bit of wisdom. He had to spend dozens of years in jail on
Robben Island.

Anwar Sadat was another of the few outstanding statesmen of the 20th
century. Read about him and his insurgences to discover the incredible
correspondences between him and Mandela. Were it not for Sadat, Egypt and
Israel would still have been at loggerheads. Fortunately for both
countries, the British did not execute Sadat, but put him to jail for
dozens of years.

I am not claiming that every terrorist will become a world leader. But I
plead that everywhere in the world we should bring terrorists to wise
justice rather than exterminate them in deep anger, hurting many innocent
bystanders. If we love all humans like God does, then let us act within
such love. This love is not in the letter of the law, but lives in our
hearts and guides our minds.
 
In Part 3 we will begin to characterise terrorism, the terrorist and
ourselves.

I pray for those who want to understand terrorism.

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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