To Question the Unquestioned. LO27340

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 10/03/01


Dear Organlearners,

Greetings to all of you.

I have in mind the 6000+ victims of the tragic and hideous events of
11/09/2001. They cannot ask questions anymore. I have in mind the families
and friends of those victims who grief over their lost ones. They can
still ask questions, but what are they questioning? I have in mind
billions of people all over the world who will be affected seriously by
these events. For example, the major source of income of countries in
Southern Africa is tourism. Tens of thousands of children more will die of
hunger because tourism has dropped sharply. Are these people living in
poverty able to question what is happening to them?

Through the grace of God I learned perhaps the most import lesson in all
my life some thirty years ago. The lesson was:- . To question everything,
including God. Since that lesson I have been questioning everything. The
answers to my questions often unlocked entropic forces which I did not
expect nor even suspect. But again through the grace of God I still live
despite all these questions and finding answers to them.

Please be careful when questioning tradition. It is like taking pokes with
a stick at a venomous viper. Here in South Africa we have several kinds
which spit their poison over several yards right into the eyes of the
person who offends them. It makes the person blind, often permanently.

You all know about by seemingly infatuation or even fanaticism with
authentic learning as apposed to rote learning (machine parrotry). Were it
not for questioning the unquestionable, I would not have understood
authentic learning by far as much as I do now. How many times have I not
heard people saying to me "Your questions are sacrilege", "You sin with
your questions", "your questions will get you into deep troubled waters"
or "Your questions are too crazy to have any sense". I am thankful that I
never had to drink the poisoned beaker like Socrates had to do more than
two millennia ago for asking too many questions on too many things. I am
thankful to the desert which taught me of spitting vipers. Perhaps it
shows that humankind has progressed slightly further on the road to
civilization.

President George W. Bush declared in the aftermath of the events of
11/09/2001 that the "American way of living" is not negotiable. Perhaps
this is true since I am not an American sharing fully in the "American way
of living". But should he have declared that the "American way of living"
is not open to questioning, it would have ignited in me an
inextinguishable fire. Such a declaration would have been fatal to
authentic learning.

What is authentic learning? It is not opposed to rote learning because
rote learning is but an immature caricature of the digestive phase of
authentic learning. It is not in cahoots with novel inventions because
they are but an indication of the bifurcative phase of authentic learning.
Peter Senge articulated two of the five disciplines for the LO (Learning
Organisation) which relate directly to authentic learning -- Personal
Mastery and Team Learning. The individualistic ("dassein", each alone)
complement of authentic learning is Personal Mastery while the collective
("mitsein", all together) complement is Team Learning.

What about the other three disciplines of a LO -- Mental Models, Shared
Vision and Systems Thinking? In Mental Models we try to unravel those
assumptions which we made to guide our lives, but which we have not
questioned before. In Shared Vision we try to formulate that future which
we believe everybody wants, but whom we have not questioned before. In
Systems Thinking we try to imagine with all the answers to our questions
the paths of change from the past to the future.

It is clear to me through all five its disciplines that a LO has to
proceed by way of questioning everything. Then it will follow the
fractal="Steigerung" path of authentic learning. Goethe was one of the
most gifted humans who ever lived. He came to the deep understanding that
to improve on his gift as an "artist of the word" that he has to sit on
many chairs, walk in many moccasins and wear many hats other than word
artistry to excel in word artistry self. After doing so for some time he
became conscious of "Steigerung". The USA will become a LO when the
American nation begins to sit on the chair of every other nation, to walk
in the moccasins of every other nation and wear the hat of every other
nation, rather assuming the role of authoritative guardian over them. Are
you Americans aware of "Steigerung"?

The South African nation is but a speck among the nations of the world.
The rich are disinvesting in South Africa at an alarming rate to South
Africans and the rest of the world alike. But what the rich don't perceive
is that South Africa is slowly transforming into a LO. In no country of
the world has wholeness been a greater issue than in South Africa. It all
has resulted from one genial South African giving South Africans the
choice in 1948:
. holism="increasing wholeness" or "apartheid"="increasing fragmentation".
The electorate chose apartheid in 1948. They have learned an expensive
lesson because in 1992 they chose for wholeness.

Dearest Oubaas (old master) Jan Smuts ("Holism and Evolution", 1926):-
Were it not for your bravery to put your great lesson to the test of
democracy in 1948, we South Africans would have not been any wiser today.
I know your most revealing words after South Africans decided upon
apartheid rather than your holism. They were the three words "so gaan dit"
("so goes it" is the literal translation of them). They were not the words
of despair nor the words of ignorance. They were the three words of a
questioning teacher wizened by the destructions of the past and committed
to heal them.

One of the striking features of the "American way of living" is that the
USA consumes more energy than any other nation of the world. The Law of
Energy Conservation (LEC) says that energy cannot be created nor be
destroyed, but can only be changed from one form to another. So where does
this energy comes from? Some of the sources are in the USA self. But they
cannot make up for the much more which is consumed. Does the USA have
secret sources to make up for the rest? No, the USA import it from many
countries in the rest of the world. It is paid for in US dollars ($$). All
seems to be fair and square.

Why does the USA not run out of $$? Because $$ flow back into the USA.
These countries exporting their energy reserves to the USA have to import
something back from the USA otherwise they would have been deluged by $$.
What do they import from the USA? Goods with value added in the USA by
making use of the very energy which the USA imported. Let us name some.
Goods like books, medicine and instrumentation. Goods like freedom,
democracy and creativity. But also goods like pornography, poisons and
weapons. Also goods like slavery, despotism and conformation.

It is easy to say that bad deeds-goods get sold to these countries because
they want to buy them. However, it is not a country which produces good
deeds-goods and bad deeds-goods, but the people of that country. Many
people produce good deeds-goods, other produce bad deeds-goods and the
rest produce both. It is not a country which imports good deeds-goods and
bad deeds-goods, but the people of that country. Many people import good
deeds-goods, other import bad deeds-goods and the rest import both.
Consequently the countries exporting their energy reserves ends up with
many bad deeds-goods produced by some people in the USA rather that some
people of those countries. Thus some other people in those countries begin
to hate the USA for selling its bad deeds-goods to their country.

Hate is not good, but bad. Hate destroys a person's ability to distinguish
between good and bad. The person who hates want to destroy the bad without
caring how much good will be destroyed too. Hate destroys a person's
ability to distinguish between the human and the deeds-goods flowing forth
from that human. The person who hates want to destroy the bad deeds-goods
without caring how many humans will be destroyed too. Is this not the
reason why specifically the two WTC were chosen and attacked?

Hate and fear are siblings. A person who bestow good deeds-goods on
another person is neither feared not hated. But persons who force with bad
deeds-goods another person to change, even though bestowing also some good
deeds-goods, are first feared and then hated. Then the second sibling
begins to kill the first so that the hate for those persons overcomes the
fear for them. The Abel-Cain syndrome. A fearless hateful person is most
dangerous because such a person will now instigate fear in the persons
hated. This person will respond with horrendous offense to the very
persons who acted offensively in the first place. Is this not the reason
why specifically the Pentagon was chosen and attacked?

I wonder what the third target would have been because it would have
afforded us with a better picture of all, but a far worse situation to
have had coping with. Many people question the very existence of God
because of the bad which happened on 11/09/2001. How can God exist with
such bad happenings? But how many people question the very existence of
God because of the bad which did not happen on that day, namely the third
target which failed. Assume it was the Congress. What would the USA have
done with most of the leaders in office killed? Is God good, is God bad or
is God good and bad?

On the very day of 11/09/2001 the sun was shining just after noon upon the
Namaqualand desert. I wish I had been there. I wish you were also there.
We would all have felt the presence of God from minute to minute. On that
spring day of 11/09/2001 the desert had been doing what it had done for
more than a million previous spring seasons. Somewhere in the past God the
Gardener took a big bag with seeds of many kinds of flowering plants and
shook it lavishly over that desert. Hence this greatest spring-flowering
garden in the world still exists after a million of years by the very
grace of God and not human intervention. All it needs is a couple of
inches of rain. Is God good, is God bad or is God good and bad?

On the very day of 11/09/2001 the sun was also beginning to shine upon
Manhattan Island. I wish nobody was there. But whom of the many who were
there felt the presence of God from minute to minute -- before the attacks
were made and even after their destruction had finished? Who are able to
see how the many human interventions in many parts of the world over many
decades and even centuries became focussed in the two WTC towers. The
seeds of destruction sowed by the bad gardener. All these interventions
connected together in the worsest human intervention in the entire history
of the USA. Is God good, is God bad or is God good and bad?

Why did God gave humankind the freedom to choose between the good and the
bad? Does this make God good, bad or both good and bad? Should the human
then behave ungodly, why do we question the existence of the good God. Why
do we not also question the human (you and me) who also does the ungodly
rather than only lives up to the divine within?

Is God offensive? Did God not created powerful laws into nature which may
become most offensive to humans either in their ignorance or in their
hubris. We can now make use of those very laws to even fly a massive jet
liner to move quickly from one place to another. But those very laws have
also been used to launch attacks on the two WTC towers. The minds of many
humans can now perceive and unlash the incredible power locked up in
Creation by the very laws created into it by the Creator. Science and
technology. But how many human minds understand what this power of science
and technology will do in the hands of a person embracing offence as the
best way of defence?

Let 11/09/2001 be a lesson for all of us. Among the thousands of people of
Manhattan Island it became close to Armageddon itself. Among the billions
of desert flowers of Namaqualand it became close to Paradise itself. The
flowers have been pollinated. They are now dying naturally to set forth
seed for next year's spring. Which thoughts are we pollinating? What
thought seeds will be set forth for the next cycle -- Armageddon or
Paradise?

God is good. With the help of God humans can become better too. What
should we do? Heal the wounds and hurt caused by all the offenses of the
past. Respond to hate with love. How? Transform our organisations into
organisations which care for humans without exceptions.

Is the Learning Organisation the answer? Do your organisation allow you to
question the unquestioned?

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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