Dear LO
Requiem for a Child yet Undead.
Pencil on white paper 9 x 18 May 9th, 37 (III) 'Mother and Dead Child on
Ladder'
Picasso study :
"But even the mothers descent is close to a fall. The conspicuous
enlargement of the thighs lowers the torso's center of gravity and
transforms the organ of locomotion into a part of the inert torso, which
hangs downward from - that is -"de-pends" on the center of action. Like
the large body the heads and the baby's limbs sag. The panic has changed
active, voluntary movement into passive dropping, a lifeless submission to
material weight. Vertical and horizontals - the least dynamic directions
determine the pattern throughout. The reduced tempo of action is
expressed in the central theme; the sluggish flow of blood, which moved
from the neck wound of the child almost without decent, fuses with the
contour of the child's arm, and dries up after oozing through the paces
between the mother's fingers."
(Last week I studied colour photo images of the innocent children wounded
and killed in the last Iraq war - )
About Perception of LO
"Within the world of corporate management theory, the Learning
Organization ("LO") is the antithesis of the rigid hierarchical models on
which most of the major corporate enterprises of this century have been
erected. It is the author's view that these authoritarian structures are
today in crisis because they have failed to engage and to utilize the
intelligent passion of the great majority of people who work for them.
They have become rigid, dogmatic and blind, and as a result have lost
market share to livelier competitors both here and abroad, or have
disappeared altogether.
The "fifth discipline" of the title is systems analysis, a way of thinking
about organizations in a non-linear manner by studying the consequences,
frequently unintended, of every organizational structure and action. The
consequence of authoritarianism, Senge holds, is to stifle team learning,
discourage personal mastery, foster inaccurate mental models, and kill the
vision that motivates. The LO theory aims to transform the resulting giant
trunks of deadwood into fresh young saplings before they crash and fall.
SNIP
There are numerous advocates of LO theory and there is a busy mailing
list, learning-org, bringing together management people from business,
education, nonprofits and the military. Despite the radical flavor of some
of Senge's ideas, these are not the ravings of a fringe lunatic; on the
contrary, they seem well on their way to becoming the mainstream, at least
in doctrine if not in practice.
The books came to me almost by serendipity. My wife, a schoolteacher
engaged in school reform, brought home the Fieldbook and suggested I might
find interesting stuff in it. She was quite right. Although addiction is a
minor theme in the LO theory, both books can be read with little
translation as if they were sobriety manuals. After reading the Fieldbook,
I went out and bought the 1990 text. Generally, the early book is more
theoretical, and the Fieldbook has more practical detail.
I found LO theory easily applicable to my situation as an engaged member
of a sobriety organization. By "learning," Senge obviously means something
different from going to classes; it means a lifelong practice of
investigating, experimenting, moving, growing in capacity and insight; it
means a life of "integrity, openness, commitment, and collective
intelligence." That seems to me a pretty fair approximation of the skills
that a long-term addict needs to have in order to stay sober. Learning in
this sense also points toward the rewards that come when a brain is
allowed to work free of addictive substances. Learning is not something
separate from doing or living; it is an engaged, intelligent mode of being
in the world. On the larger scale, a "learning organization" is one that
creates a reality in which its vision and practice flourish almost
effortlessly, and whose members have the feeling of being part of a truly
"great team." To get to that point, however, requires a long and strenuous
effort, and much "practice, practice, practice."
Senge and his collaborators classify the transformative work to be done
into the five disciplines of personal mastery, shared vision, team
learning, mental models, and systems analysis. All five lines of work
contain useful ideas for being a better member of a sobriety team."
Marty N.
The last time I was employed in any capacity in an organizational sense
was 1976 - only since 1996 have I been able, through my work as an artist,
to be very slightly patronised (in both senses of the word) by
consultants, self styled 'leaders' and drug addicts, criminals and others
in-between ( as if a CEO 'leader' and 'drug addict' were really so
'different';-) which is my point.
I learned a hell of a lot from Scott Peck's experience of the zone,
hinterlands, of understanding within and of the term 'spiritual' shared
between a 'cardinal' and that 'cardinal sinner'. They are, all too often I
think, one and the same man. Metaphor and reality blending into shame most
recently in Boston's Catholic church community I believe. Shame is
sweeping our nation one way and another.
The above I thought then would interest many of the LO.
Many people looking at my fine art work (paintings drawings writings;-)
might think it the work of a drug addict on a calmer day;-) or someone who
in dioysian fashion resorts to the red wine (bulls blood) in abundance to
get his 'manic scribbles' onto the surface...yet I confess, I have never
smoked any class of drug from cannabis to heroin, I quit smoking
cigarettes ten years ago (coincidentally to en earlier post this month
with the help of the man, Mike Robson --retired now-- who introduced
'quality circles' to the UK... and lived in our village for a while) and I
drink only so much wine as clears the arteries for a slight
over-consumption of pastries;-) and this practice, my experience of
sobriety, such as the above confession;-) constitutes has been the route
to many a 'creative collapse' and, 'purposeful insight' toward ordinate
bifurcations.
For a while I have been studying the transformations inhering to Picasso's
'Guernica', if ever there was an intoxicated genius, and one Senge wants
to know better from inside out...in considering such, I was invited to
consider too the collapse of the Balzacian figure of a painter, whose work
was like, " nothing but confusedly mad colours, contained by a multitude
of bizarre lines, which amount to a wall of coloured paint." -- well, I
can 'do' that ;-) so can many modern ;-) artists...but yesterday someone
here sent me a book called 'Inside the Mind of God' it seeks to align the
'making visible' via the craft of science, noted by Heidegger, promoted
here longwise by At de Lange...get a copy of the book...see that wall of
crazy lines, colours...the tangle of it all...and see newly, through new
eyes of technology just what an artist God is...;-) yet is often hidden
from normal gaze.
Here is a cycle system taken from the fine art tradition for the personal
mastery aspect of art creation Preparation, Incubation, Illumination,
Verification. Sounds quite scientific doesn't it. You might like the
following, " My paintings are but research and experiment, I never do
paintings as a work of art. All of them are my researches, I search
constantly and there is a logical sequence in all of this research.That is
why I number them and date them. Maybe one day someone will be grateful."
Picasso to Alexander Liberman.
I think I have to dedicate that description to another great artist (imho)
who works here creating a picture that it may take future generations to
re-assemble to see with focus and clarity, for the 'technology' called
love or rvn or agape has not yet aligned itself in sufficient bandwidth
for it to be seen as it is. And in that idea I see a much, much greater
idea hover upon the shared and ever revolving horizon.
Love,
Andrew
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