Replying to LO30238 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Cambell < ACampnona@aol.com > wrote:
>While I was gone, I wondered if 'Love' might be an encompassing
>essentiality, the whole that is greater than the seven (essentialities).
>One among many that happens when, and only when, we make
>that infinitely, sacredly small movement toward - spontaneous
>unconditional love of one another -.
>
>Such an 'eight' might make an interesting form?
>
>Thoughts and feelings please.
Greetings dear Andrew,
I appreciate your thinking because some time after having discovered the
7Es (seven essentialities of creativity), i had similar thoughts too
concerning wisdom, hope and love. But gradually i learnt to distinguish
between these 7Es and whatever (such as wisdom, hope and love) emerge by
their guidance.
One strange aspect of the 7Es is that they are not independant from each
other. The one, although feigntly, suggest the others. Furthermore, it is
also possible to combine six of them into the remaining one. Should we
combine, for example, wholeness with the other six, i think of the result
as "deep wholeness". It is for this reason, against what i knew about them
because of having discovered them, that i have been tempted to seek for an
eigth essentiality.
When something emerges as a result of the 7Es guiding it, it is as if the
7Es are manifested in this emerged thing. Thinking of, for example, "deep
wholeness", is an emergence too. Thus it is easy to confuse "deep
wholeness" with other emergences, especially love which is at the pinnacle
of all of them.
I think that what we rather ought to do, is to contemplate how any major
emergence reflects the 7Es in it. Let us think of love. Let us contemplate
otherness as example.We tend as humans to love our own kind. But what
about love for all kinds of humans, even those we don't know or those whom
we are in conflict with. I often meet somebody who says that he/she is a
"mense mens" (human's human -- Afrikaans for liking to socialise with
other people). But sometimes that "human's human" have no feeling at all
for other forms of life like pets or plants. About six months i stared at
a "human's human" felling some dozen trees just because they did not fit
any more in his plans. Can we have love without respect for otherness?
I think of love as at the pinnacle of all emergences. Thus love poses a
peculiar problem -- does it also manifest all the emergences and the 7Es
having guided it? My own thinking is that it does. That is why love can
act as the only thing to emerge which need not to stipulate conditions.
People often speak of unconditional love. But i still have to find someone
telling me why unconditional love is possible at all.
When i think of your phrase "the whole that is greater than the seven
(essentialities)", i realise how problematic this is. For example, when i
unite the remaining six 7Es with wholeness so that "deep wholeness"
emerge, is this "deep wholeness" more than the "sum of the 7Es". I think
it is. That is why Goethe's "deep" wholeness is a persistent source of
inspiration to me.
What about anything which has emerged as a result of the 7Es? I think that
such a thing is also more than the "sum of the 7Es" at that level of
complexity. This is why it its difficult for me to digress into the 7Es
themselves when i focus on the emergent thing itself. It is as if the 7Es
recede into the background, so much so that i only can recall them by
their names. Several fellow learners wrote to me in private, one quite
recently, expressing that they also experience the 7Es as "fleeting
entities" when observing them in any emergent phenomenon.
>apologies if this subject has already been dealt with on LO.
We had some dialogue on it which Leo Minningh introduced. But i cannot
remember whether he proposed specifically love as the 8th one.
Fellow learners may think this topic is too esoteric or inappropiate for
our ongoing dialogue on LOs. However, it is a crucial issue. Senge
proposed the five disciplines for identifying and managing a LO. It took
up about 98% of the volume of text in the "Fifth Discipline". But he also
informed us in its appendix about the 11 essences of any LO -- 2% of text.
Does this makes the 5 disciplines more important than the 11 essences? I
do not think so. I think he said wisely as little as possible of them
because of their elusive character. Would he have composed at those times
his book in terms of them and called it "The Eleventh Essence", it would
have been a flop.
Elusive character? In one of his proverbs Solomon wrote about the seven
pillars of wisdom. He never wrote what each one is. Wisdom or ignorance?
Perhaps it is rather their elusive character -- the fact that they become
"bundled" transparently into wisdom whenever it emerges.
Dear Andrew, i have given only my thoughts which are not meant to overrule
any of yours. I do not know what set your thinking into action, but lately
i often thought how much love is essential to humane living. It is the
very essence (not essentiality) of humane living -- Homo sapiens amans.
That is why i decided to call the 7Es the seven essentialities of
creativity rather than the seven essences of creativity -- to distinguish
them from all other essences of the living universe.
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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