Replying to LO29811 --
Dear Organlearners,
Jan Lelie <janlelie@wxs.nl> writes:
>Good heavens reader, dear At,
>
>Thank you for again raising an interesting issue and
>supplying an answer to a few questions. And raising more.
>I'm still not fully aware of what i'm trying to say still
>experimenting with the thoughts, trying to find the best form.
>I'll just go with the flow.
Greetings dear Jan
Thank you for your kind response.
As i wrote, i felt the strange urge to do this study. And then came the
big surpise -- Team Learning was absent until the disciples began to
organise the believers in "churces" (translation for the Greek word
"ekklesia" which rather meant "those called out"). Gradually this
"ekklesia" (church) became interpreted as "those elected". But i now
favour the original meaning -- those who step out to the calling of God --
love unconditionally and without exception.
I must admit that i was aftraid that i may be stepping on long held
convictions by catalysing such unconventional questions. During my study i
was surprised at how many way-out questions kept popping up within me.
>First of all, i must say that i do consider us to be still
>rather primitive animals (to avoid the word "creatures",
>is there a word for entities that can develop themselves
>in large parts? "enactors"?). We are born into to this
>world to live a life full of confusion.
You can write that last sentence over and over again. Why all this
confusion? It has to do with the fact that we are thinking animals. But
what in our thinking is/are the cause of this confusion? A lack of
learning? A lack of systems thinking? A lack of LOs (Learning
Organisations)? A lack of unconditional love?
I am now convinded for the past few years that it has to do with how we
map the "world-outside-me" into the "world-inside-me". Perhaps i will
think differently in a few years from now, but at present i do not even
suspect anything else. The worst in this mapping is the "one-into-many" as
a "many-into-one" (i.e, reductionistic, linear and authoritative
thinking.)
>Who am I? Why is this? What is happening? How do i
>do this? These blanks have to be filled with what i here
>call a faith, some preliminary choices, a personality. And
>we're doing this still in a primitive way.
Your comment reminds me of what is happening the past few months
here in South Africa in almost all communication media. It is a
discussion or debate, but seldom a dialogue, on the fundamental
question "How can I know God". I will not go into the details. But two
things strike me
(1) the lack of making a distinction between knowledge and information
(2) the inability to held a dialogue, free of judgements.
>It has always stricken me that most religious leaders and founders
>of churches are men.
It is the same in business, academia, etc. Sexual equity in all walks of
life is still an ideal rather than a fact.
>Most religions - at least those with a God - are too simple
>to be true. That isn't wrong - as i told you we're simple
>enactors -. We need simple stories, miracles, rituals, a list
>of do's and don'ts to make sense of a complex world fast.
I think we are reaching the end of an era here. For example, it is said in
business that to sell something effectively, it has to be done in simple
sentences using common words.
The world is complex and more people are beginning to appreciate it.
>Now, my suspicion tells me that this faculty (or even a need:
>we need a back ground, a set of rules and values, a faith in
>order to be able to think and act) of adapting to a religion is
>used - or perhaps even kidnapped (please notice the word
>kid) - for another purpose: to create and sustain membership
>to a group.
I do not think so. Individuals and organisations live by rules. But i do
agree that some individuals are bent on setting up rules for everything. I
know several people who, whenever speaking in a meeting, is trying to set
up a new rule.
>We do notice the intergroup dynamics, however. It leads
>to the devastations we can see, hear and smell around us.
>Most of the times the other groups are seen as having an
>interesting "otherness", a list of attributions, a set of peculiarities.
>We even need this otherness, because it helps us in defining
>who we are. That's why we're so fond of travelling.
This "otherness" is one of the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity). I
think that we need all the 7Es to know ourselves. Knowledge is the outcome
of learning. Learning with one or more of the 7Es seriously impaired leads
to little knowledge.
>Now, I assume that our poorly developed ability to learn
>who we are, shows itself in our projections on the outer
>world and our organisations.
You can write this again and again! I think it is wisdom rather than an
assumption. Observing oneself and change what is not satisfying is one of
the most difficult things to accomplish. One thing struck me when studying
the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin -- his immense ability to steer his
personal development.
>What i find missing in every religion (explicitly, not implicitly,
>because it is inevitable) - even the religions based on theories
>of organizing, like the Learning Organization - is an account,
>a set of stories, rules and rituals for intergroup dynamics based
>on personal spiritual development.
I would not say "every religion" because although i have studied many
religions, i have little practical experience of most of them. But i do
agree with you in the sense that external information is often used to
suppress personal knowledge and spiritual development. Franklin was quite
frank in his autobiography when writing that he did not attend sermons
regularly because the pastor wanted to make him a good presbiterian rather
than a person with good virtues.
>I suppose that the KoH - lacking intergroup dynamics - will
>be a dull situation, but only for a short while. Human beings
>will mess up every paradise. The LO is not a heaven, and even
>the KoH will not be a heaven. Heaven is, like hell, the others.
Yes, many humans are inclined to mess up things. But coming back to
Franklin, one of his goals in life was not to mess up things. He gives
many examples how he avoided messing up something. The strange thing is
that his autobiography ends abruptly, not telling anything about the last
thirty compelling years of his life. But in the last dozen or so pages he
describe several times how others tried to mess up his own life. I think
he just got fed up with it all. Perhaps in his last thirty years during
which he accomplished so many things, there were too many people trying to
mess his life up.
There is no hell like people messing things up in one's life. But on the
other hand, there is no heaven like caring, considerate people making
things better in one's life. I think that the crux of the matter is
creativity.
We can create destructively or we can create constructively. It is up to
us to decide and learn which of these two Janus faces of creativity we
will wear.
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
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.