Replying to LO29640 --
Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl> writes:
>What binds a (learning) organisation?
>
>This question is specific, the more general question
>
>"what sort of relationships/bonds/links could be distinguished
>in our world?" and "what makes something a whole?"
>
>plays a couple of weeks in my mind. I realised that it is a complex
>subject,.......(snip)
Greetings dear Leo,
I searched about ten minutes for this essay of yours, wanting to reply to
it since nobody else did so far. I think that in it some important
questions are asked.
The question "what makes something a whole?" above is a jewel. My own
answer to it would be short and sweet:- "wholeness"! But it just displaces
the question to know what wholeness involves.
There exists in Symbolic Logic a branch called the logic of relationships.
In it any transitive relationship is symbolised by xRy while a reflexsive
relationship is symbolised by xR.
A curious aspect of the logic of relationships is that it just accepts
that the relationships form a whole. It does not answer what keeps them a
whole. I think it cannot answer that question. Furthermore, i think that
the whole cannot exist without relationships.
>I am not sure what is wise: just let this contribution stop with
>the above questions and thus giving you the oportunity to
>create your own thoughts, or start with sharing my thoughts
>with you (and thus possibly influencing your mind flows). I
>decided to do the latter and try to translate my thoughts on
>the general question and later on the more specific one.
>However, I hope that you still are able to think independently
>on this subject. I need your input!
I felt the same with the dialogue on "Blind to Wholeness" in which many
reasons for it were proposed. But as they came into discussion, i began to
see a general pattern among them which also a relationship! Its form is
"world-inside-me"#interaction#"world-outside-me"
The more this interaction gets disturbed for a person, the less that
person has sense of wholeness.
It may seem that the above is just loose talk. However, one day when
pressed to define truth, Goethe, master of wholeness, replied that it is
the interaction between the "world-inside-me" and the "world-outside-me"!
>Let me start.
>
>I was trying to create a picture which was as complete as
>possible. That means that my thoughts meandered from
>mechanical constructions to natural sciences, behavioral
>sciences, nature and human societies.
Goethe's thoughts did the same. But he resisted all attempts to divide his
activities into physics, chemistry, geology, botany, ............ He said
that should he do so, he will have lost the wholeness of it all.
I will now snip a lengthy part with a dazzling number of examples to come
to:
>Possibly, these forces play also a role in human organisations.
>What is the extra element or force in a LO?? The common
>goal? The limited space of the office and building (a mechanical
>element), like the walls of a prison? In a human organisation
>individuals could leave or come in. A LO could grow or decline
>or disappear. There is certainly a temporary aspect involved. I
>am still not sure what character all the possible relationships are
>that define a LO.
>
>I leave it to you, dear reader to think of the binding factors of
>a human organisation and in particular a LO. I was also thinking
>of a marriage in this respect.
I think its (1) the awareness to, (2) the learning of and (3) taking care
of relationships within the LO. In my work on the 7Es (seven
essentialities of creativity) i think of relationships xRy in the most
general manner as the associativity pattern x#R#y of wholeness. I write it
usually as X*Y*Z. Just explore such three-membered patterns irrespective
how simple or complex the three members are. As you also have suggested.
>Looking back to what I have written so far, I think that
>some factors are touched which could define a whole. If
>we try to search for answers in relation to wholeness, we
>should think of relationships.
You also write:
>You see, I have still several questions. One burning question
>is not yet touched. It is the function and character of what
>t de Lange calls 'umlomo', or mouthpiece. The umlomo which
>brings A and B together. I think that At not has thought of
>something physical, like the link of a chain. But possibly he has
>associated the umlomo with a catalyst such as in a chemical
>reaction.
A frequent mental excerise with me is to take ANY two things A and B and
see if i cannot find the central member U (for "umlomo", Zulu word for
mouthpiece) which connects them as A*U*B. This is really a powerful
excercise.
Leo, i know that you have been studying creativity for a long time. I
myself always thought of it as something abstract. Then after having
discovered the 7Es, my understanding of creativity changed drastically. I
now see it as something in the section where the phsyical and spiritual
dimensions of the universe overlap. In other words, it constitutes the
relationship (associative pattern)
physical*creativity*spiritual
It is creativity which links these two complementary dimensions together!
>And is with the introduction of this catalytic umlomo the
>distinction between an introduced foreign element and the
>forces within still valid?
>
>I am curious of your reactions and thoughts.
I do not try force a foreign umlomo U in the relationship between A and B.
I try to search by observation what is already between them affording the
A*U*B pattern. Sometimes it is easy, but sometimes it takes weeks of
searching.
Thank you Leo for sharing your thoughts with us.
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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