Replying to LO29616 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>Dear At,
>
>I would like to ask you straightforwardly - can you give
>your preferred examples of this on the human spiritual
>realm. I would like to explore this aspect of 'reality'
>openly and here and now.
upon me who wrote
>> Any system increasing its organisation such that there is
>> greater decrease in organisation of the surroundings is
>> doing great harm to the universe.
>> Examples of such systems are a monopoly in the business
>> world, a dictatorship in the political world and
>> deforestation in the ecological world.
Greetings dear Andrew,
I will use myself as an example.
After my Christian rebirth in December 1970, i become a zealot for about
two years. I was on a conversion spree, thinking that i had acquired the
magic wand to accomplish it. I studied religious books intensely and after
each one i had more ammunition to shoot at the unconverted.
Thanks to God, I realised that my mission was to become a teacher and not
to remain as a scientist. I did not become a preacher. Within a year, the
pupils taught me a most valuable lesson. It is not my own learning and
thus increased knowledge which makes them excellent pupils, but their own
learning and knowledge. They cut me down to size. They showed me that the
information which I gave to them was by far not the knowledge which they
gained. They made me realise that my task was to assist them in learning
creatively. To think like a scientist takes much longer than a year in
contact with me as their teacher.
I stopped being a zealot. I learned that i chopped off the branches of the
religious trees of others so as to let my own religious tree grow. I had
to adapt my religious rythm to that of others and not they to mine. My own
rebirth did not gave me the right to judge others that they did not
experienced it and to decide that it is time for them to have it. I
learned that religious self-justification is a serious Mental Model.
When i sit in church Sundays, i look at the many unoccupied wooden
benches. During the apartheid years they were filled up because it was
good for one's CV to claim that one is a regular member of the church
which sanctioned the government's policy of apartheid. I think of the many
trees which had to be felled so that wood planks could be sawn from the
better parts of them. I had been to the Amazon and saw just how worse it
was. Hundreds of trees were felled to get to the one of which the wood was
desired. Worse, of that tree only the bottom part of the trunk was taken.
The rest, some 70% of the tree, went to waste.
I must say that i am now a tree zealot. When i see a tree being felled, i
make a point to ask the people involved whether they have already replaced
it by planting ten trees elsewhere. To take is to give ten times back and
not a tenth.
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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