Constructive Creativity and Leadership. Part 4. LO27590

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 11/27/01


Dear Organlearners,

Greetings to all of you.

Part 4. Inner complex movies as "one-to-many-mappings".

We have seen in part 3 that the asking in public of many probing questions
on a horrendously destructive event will be considered as sacrilege to many
followers. But it is by the very asking of such many probing questions that
a person becomes conscious of the destructive event as a complex movie
rather than a simplistic picture.

Yes, it is but a movie because all that questioning happens in the mind of
that person. However, when the movie happens outside the mind, it becomes a
horrendous drama. It is then when people expect their leaders to steer a
wise course through the complexity of this changing world. They want their
leaders to be prepared for what they have not prepared themselves by
questioning.

Leaders can prepare themselves by creating such an inner complex movie
through serious questioning. This complex movie consists of many events
preceding and following that destructive event, all linked together into
one whole. This wholeness ("unity-associativity") of past*present*future
events is another distinguishing feature of leadership.

Followers expect their leaders to do complex things wisely, but to talk
simple things while keeping the doing and talking together. It is as if
they expect their leaders to shuttle within the wink of an eye between the
Sahara at +50C and the Arctic at -30C. They expect their leaders to perform
a miracle by keeping complex fire and simple ice together.

Followers expect their leaders to perform miracles because they themselves
did not ask in advance many probing questions. Thus they have not become
conscious in their own minds of the complex movie of a possible destructive
event. They see on TV or cinema screens actual movies of it. In some cases
these movies are acted as play and in the other cases they are recorded as
real drama.

After such a movie, realistic or real, people should have gone to a
secluded place and contemplated that movie by questioning it. Then they
would have reconstructed their own inner complex version of that movie.
They would have shed tears for all the victims in such a destruction,
whether realistic or real. They would have prayed to God to help humankind
change the course it is following. They would have known what to do to
prevent the next destructive event. They would not have expected their
leaders to perform miracles.

Why do people not reconstruct their own inner complex movie by questioning
the outer movie which they sensed? I think that most of them have never
questioned openness. They sensed the outer movie because of opening their
eyes and ears to it. Should they have blindfolded their eyes and plugged
their ears, they would never have sensed it. But in order to reconstruct
their own inner complex movie, they have to close their eyes and ears to
unrelated sensations. For example, they could have blindfolded their eyes
and plugged their ears. Why? They have to question what they had sensed of
the outer movie and follow its full course rather than to be disturbed by
new sensations of a different movie following up the previous one which
ought to be questioned.

The Bible speaks of a different way rather than blindfolding the eyes and
plugging the ears. Go to the study or inner room where you will not be
disturbed and question it all in prayer. You may even question God because
that is very much what God wants you to do.

I have much experiences of a third way. Go to a pristine place like a
desert, mountain or forest where there is no other humans to disturb your
thinking. Allow the sensations derived from nature to recall what you have
sensed of the movies of civilisation and then begin to question those
movies thoroughly. Nature has the soft way of not intruding with new
sensations after you have begun your questioning. The Australian aborigines
call it "go walkabout".

Here is a fourth way. Busy yourself with a hobby in which you have to care
for a living thing like plants or animals. Question the needs of that
living creature and allow these needs to question once again of what you
have sensed of civilisation's movies. A fifth way is put away your watch
and schedule and then to put all your mind into creating something
constructive. The more this creation is related to the outer movie which
you have sensed, the better. There are other ways of which you fellow
learners may also have much experience. Please tell us about them.

What worries me immensely is that as soon as a person becomes the leader,
that person is given little opportunity to reconstruct complex inner movies
as the leader. He/she rather has to connect with the public on public
issues day and night. As a result of the office of leading, the leader is
suddenly deluged with a complexity of new sensations. If the leader takes
recluse for more than a week, the media or grapevines are very fast on
reporting it and seeking justification.

If I had my say in this, I would demand for every leader one week in any
secluded place for every six weeks in office -- the sabbatical leave. The
most important job of leaders are to reconstruct complex inner movies so as
to act upon them and speak in simple terms of them.

Followers do not let leaders reconstruct such complex inner movies because
they cannot do it self so as to know what it takes. They rather allow
themselves to be indoctrinated that they must memorise pictures of the past
as break throughs or bench marks so that business in them can flourish. But
since the authentic reconstruction of inner complex movies cannot be
bought, these movies are grossly neglected. Followers cannot lead their own
minds, yet they often prescribe to leaders how to lead their own minds.
People fail to notice that this will degrade leadership into only that
which followers allow. Thus followers get the leaders which they deserve.

How do we reconstruct the inner complex movie after having sensed an outer
movie? We may do it by asking many questions freely. But do we know how to
ask questions freely? We may also do it by imagination. But do we know how
to imagine? Are there not some quide lines which we can use in our
questioning or imagining? Yes, there are.

Many who can question profoundly or imagine vividly, have created a system
of patterns which guides them how do it. Most of these thinkers are only
tacitly aware of these patterns. Hence we have to seek the patterns between
the lines of what they have said or written. Few of them can actually
articulate the system of patterns. They who can are usually considered as
the philosophically minded. Nevertheless, once we compare these systems of
patterns used in questioning or imagining, we find that they differ widely.
There is nothing wrong with it because these systems are the outcome of the
"one-to-many-mapping" of creativity.

Can we create a systems thinking (systematic, coherent and ordered account)
of these systems of patterns? Yes. One way is to make a survey of as many
as possible of these systems of patterns. Afterwards these systems are then
integrated into a systematic whole. The resulting patterns in this
integrated system may then very well be used to guide questioning and
imagining. However, it works well for only those who created such a systems
thinking authentically. Those who learn rotely such a systems thinking have
far less benefit from it.

Another way is to discover the patterns implicit in the very
"one-to-many-mapping" of creativity, i.e. to discover the implicit order of
creativity. For example, we may compare two complex, yet vastly different
systems which came about by the creative endeavours of tens of thousands of
thinkers. We then search for corresponding patterns between these two
systems. I have done it by comparing the chemical and mathematical systems.
I have found seven corresponding patterns which I prefer to call the 7Es
(seven essentialities of creativity). Their names are liveness, sureness,
wholeness, fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and openness.

Each of the 7Es allows us to generate questions almost endlessly. For
example, the philosopher Hegel used the pattern which I call liveness
("becoming-being") to create dialecticism. The general-statesman-botanist
Jan Smuts used the pattern which I call wholeness ("monadicity
associativity") to create holism with which he explained biological and
psychological evolution.
 
These 7Es can also help us to distinguish between destructive and
constructive creativity. Should one or more of them be impaired
(insufficiently mature), our creative efforts will become destructive
rather than constructive. For example, is wholeness crucial to constructive
creativity and why?

One elementary way to explain wholeness is that without it whatever we have
constructed will fall apart again on the slightest disturbance. In this
explanation we have made use of our tacit knowing that the parts should be
strongly connected so as to withstand even strong disturbances. The
"strongly" refers to spareness ("quantity-limit") and the "connected"
refers to fruitfulness ("connect-beget"). We can take this spareness and
fruitfulness together by saying that whatever we have constructed has to be
coherent. This word comes from the Latin "co-"=together and "hereo"=stick.
The parts of our creation have to stick firmly together.

See that, while exploring wholeness, we have encountered also two other
7Es, namely fruitfulness and spareness. It is because the 7Es are not
independent of each other. Each one depends on the other six to become
endlessly explored. They are nothing else than the "many" of a profound
"one-to-many-mapping". Here the "one" is the form of whatever we create.

See how we may use the other four 7Es when exploring wholeness even
further. Liveness ("becoming-being") comes in by actually bringing the
parts together. Sureness ("identity-categoricity") comes in when we have to
match (fit) these parts. Otherness ("quality-variety") comes in by bearing
in mind all kinds of parts. Openness ("open-paradigm") entails that we open
up to search for those parts, but close down when fitting them together.

This interdependency between the 7Es is difficult for us to understand
because "one-to-many-mapping" in thinking is unfamiliar to us. As we become
daily more subjected to information from many sources, the more we use
"many-to-one-mapping" in thinking to make sense out of this deluge of
information. A "many-to-one-mapping" in thinking is like fitting the pieces
of a jig-saw puzzle together. But a "one-to-many-mapping" in thinking is
like exploring an intact picture along a paths which we could have used to
cut the picture in a puzzle.

Creating inner complex movies in leadership have sadly become like fitting
the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle together. They are seldom created anymore
upon experiencing a profound event or creating a novel idea. Thus leaders
find it increasingly difficult to manage a world becoming increasingly
complex. And followers become increasingly complacent, if not bewildered.

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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