Replying to LO29168 --
Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Deijmann <wm.deijmann@chello.nl> writes
in reply to my succint description:
>> Let me try to say in one sentence for each what talent
>> and character are for me. A talent is an exceptional
>> mental ability of a person to perform skilfully a particular
>> activity. Character is the combination of all the qualities
>> (values) by which a person guides all his/her activities,
>> even those developed into talents.
>
>At, your description of talent as being a mental ability places
>talents in the heads of people as a kind of brain-thing, I
>disagree with you there, but I might be misunderstanding
>the concept of mental ability you use. I will not debate on
>your assumptions nor raise questions but instead dig some
>spades deeper on my foundings to help you understand
>mine better.
Greetings dear Winfried,
I am beginning to understand you better. Thank you for your patience.
I myself would never dare to make a conclusion to what and how a person
thinks based on merely two sentences. Anyway, every human activity (even
mental activities) involves the whole body and not merely the neurological
system. Since talent has to do with activities, it involves the whole of
the body. But since a talent cannot be excercised without thinking, it
also involve the whole of the spirit.
The following I say with great respect to those involved. If some fellow
learner doubt this that talent has to with the whole of body and mind,
please go to an instution for the seriously mental disabled people. I have
done it at an institution for the worst cases and i think i could not have
cried more, even for the death of beloved ones. Not single patient in that
insitution have a single talent.
>To get more indepth information you need to read the book
>I wrote together with my friend and colleague Leo van de
>Burg: 'Menskundige Bedrijfskunde, - De Ideale Organisatie
>bestaat niet'. This will be hard because it is written in Dutch..... :-(
I think I have to explain to fellow learners the smiley here. Knowing
Afrikaans allow a person to understand Dutch fairly and vice versa.
>I will give it a try in my 'wooden shoes and tulips' English...
I will try with my 'vel(d) shoes and succulent' English.
>The most fundamental and in itself unchangeable
>characteristic of human beings is that they are either male
>or female. On biological grounds a strict line can be
>drawn between man and woman.
Dear Winfried, I am afraid that reality is far more complex than this.
Normal humans (without the SRY gene switched on) have the sex chromosomes
XX (females) and XY (males). Unfortunately, there are sad abberations like
X_ (Turner's syndrome) and XXX, XXY, XXXY, ... (Klinefelter's syndrome).
Furthermore, when the SRY gene gets switched on, in the case of females
they will begin to develop male sex organs. Lasty, vast imbalanse of sex
hormones during the gestation period will also influence the baby to be
born seriously affected in body and mind. This is possibly a main cause of
homosexuality ("I was born with it").
>As far as behavior is concerned we speak of male and
>female qualities that are present in individual proportions
>in human beings of either sex. Female qualities are: being
>tender, caring, person-orientated, introspect; male qualities:
>being enterprising, ambitious, object-orientated, extrovert.
Based on my own observations i cannot accept such a dichotomous
classification. But i do concede three things
(1) more women (of all cultures) than men are predisposed to the
qualities which you describe and vice versa with men.
(2) the effect of a particular culture is to relocate some qualities from
the list for woman to the list of men and vice versa
(3) far too many people have the mental model that women have a fixed
list of qualities and similar for men.
>1.2 Mental constitution
>
>The mental constitution is defined by four qualities:
>investigation, care, presentation, leadership. Every human
>being has his own individual constitution made up from
>these qualities, in most cases with clear dominance of one
>and near-absence of one of the qualities. I will shortly
>describe the four basic mental constitutions a.k.a. temperaments:
My own observations is far different. Allow me to speak of your
"qualities of mental constitution" as "kinds of temperament" (KOT).
(1) There are not only four KOTs
(2) A person is not born with a fixed number of KOTs.
(3) The number of KOTs can change through spiritual bifurcations,
becoming more through emergences and less through immergences.
(4) KOTs can be improved upon profoundly by act of learning.
I am studying Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. What a remarkable person
he must have been. He even cultivated/shaped persistently his temperament
in every facet of it.
I have once written an essay for our LO-dialogue "The Fractality of
Character". I still intend to write the essay "The Fractality of
Temperant".
>At replied to me:
>> It is striking that a normal person can have many talents
>> (note plural), but only one character (note singular). In
>> other words, there is more > wholeness ("unity-associativity")
>> in character than in talents. This is the very reason why
>> character have control (agency) over talents rather than
>> the other way around.
>
>At, your reply assumes that every one is born with the
>same amount of (latent) talents, and that only 'one'
>character is developed. This is where we disagree strongly.
>Every human being is so to speak- a species in itself, with
>his/her own pre-destinated set of talents and
>character-potentials. Read on...
>
>2. CHARACTER
>How do I define character? I distinguis two aspects:
>capacities and motives.
No, dear Winfried, I will never assume that a person is born with (1) a
fixed number of talents of which (2) some are latent.
Furthermore, the more wholesome character becomes, the more it guides
simple talents to become one camplex talent too. I have far too good
examples set by Da Vinci and Goethe.
Fortunately, i now think i know why we think so differently. We have
completely different conceptions of the human character!
Sadly, i have to stop here because i have to attend to urgent matters. But
i hope, if God permits, to take it up here again.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.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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