Replying to LO30247 --
Dear Organlearners,
Terje Tonsberg <tatonsberg@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Love could be considered a source of passion. I do not think
>it can be an E because it is a category (sureness) of feelings
>that has a certain quality (otherness) and intensity (spareness).
>Thus it is of a higher category than the 7Es; the 7Es are more
>elementary.
Greetings dear Terje,
I have explained to Andrew that for me that the emergence of love depends
on the 7Es rather being the 8th one. You consider it as a "higher
category". This made me wonder -- to what category does it belong?
Some people say that love is an emotion. I think that love is more complex
than being a mere emotion. For example, think of a person whom we love.
Should that person die, we will grieve (which is an emotion) for him/her.
But should that person excell in performance, we will have joy (another
emotion) for him/her. Or should that person be in danger, we will have
anxiety (also an emotion) for him/her. It is possible to think of love as
the combination of all the emotions which it elicits. But i think it
rather connects with all of them. Thus, although love can generate various
emotions, this does not make love an emotion.
The 7Es are not emotions. Love is not an emotion. Thus one is tempted to
conclude that love belongs to the 7Es. But wait, there is more to it.
Other people say that love belongs to the class of affinities. Other
members of this class are affection, attachment, attraction, charity,
devotion, esteem, feeling, fondness, friendship, liking, passion,
propensity, regard and tender- ness. Again love is for me far more complex
than anyone of these affinities so that it cannot be classified with them.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that love can emerge through one or more of
them. For example, two persons who find each other attractive may
eventually fall in love with each other.
However, your remark above entails the opposite viewpoint, namely that
love is a source of passion and thus perhaps of the other affinities too.
It is typical of something of a higher order to catalyse the emergence of
some thing of a lower order. But your viewpoint, which I aggee with, does
not exclude the one that love may emerge through affinities. In other
words, there is a complex, two-way relationship between love and the
affinities.
But so is the complex, two-way relationship between the 7Es and whatever
emergent entity which is guided by them. For example, i may have a longing
for something which is prevented by a lack of liveness ("becoming-
being"). Then, as i prepare (a "becoming") myself and finally act (another
"becoming") to obtain it, i become aware of how important processes
("becomings") are. I may eventually become fond of liveness or even begin
to love it. Thus one is tempted again to conclude that love belongs to
the 7Es.
>Although the 7Es are not mutually exclusive concepts when
>looking at a particular system, they do not have more or less
>of each other in the abstract form. For example, I don't think
>you can say that sureness, as an abstract concept, has a
>certain amount of wholeness or otherness in it.
I agree.
>I see a hierarchy of created things, starting with the most
>elementary, as follows:
>
> 1. Events (anything with a beginning)
> 2. Bodies and events that are related to bodies (such as
> attributes and relations)
> 3. The 7Es.
You got me thinking in highest gear here. I think we ought to make a
distinction between the "implicit operation" of the 7Es within us and our
"explicit awareness" (even merely on a tacit level) to their operation
within us. Allow me a personal example. In 1967 my late, dear father and i
had a strong difference of opinion on wholeness. For the first time in my
life i became explicitly aware of wholeness and that it cannot be forsaken
where fragmentation seems to be the better alternative.
As for the "explicit awareness", i can put it at level 3 as you did, but
as for the "implicit operation" i cannot do so. I do not know where to put
it, but i will give it further thoughts.
>I think love, like the 7Es, can be both constructive and
>destructive, but it is a source of passion, not a form of it.
>The form, in terms of the 7Es, is more elementary.
For me the 7Es cannot be destructive. It is rather my inability to yield
to them which will cause a destruction. For example, when i try to avoid
diversity (otherness) in a situation having too much diversity for me to
cope with, i create systems which cannot adapt to such diversity. In the
long run they will get destroyed.
Likewise i think that love cannot be destructive. However, i concede that
where my love is constrained by one or more impaired 7Es, that love may
lead me into a situation where that impaired 7Es may have destructive
consequences. For exmaple, my love for deserts took me there. Sometimes
dangerous accidents happened, not because my love took me there, but
because of my stupidity not taking heed to a particular 7E.
I think that it is the opposite of love which cause destructions, namely
hatred. Like for love and the class of affinities, hatred is a complex
outcome of the class of animosities. Some animosities are acrimony,
antagonism, bitterness, hostility, malevolence, malice, malignity, rancor
and spite.
Hatred is a terrible thing. For example, i grew up as an Afrikaner child
in an Afrikaner community. Many Afrikaners of the second generation (to
which my grandparents belonged) before me had an intense hatred for the
horrendous things which the British had done to them during the
British-Boer War (1899-1902). In my contact with this second generation i
was exposed to this hatred, often not knowing how to cope with it. Many
English speaking South Africans continued afterwards to hazzel them and
the first generation (to which my parents belonged) before me with many
kinds of animosities. It was difficult for this generation to overcome
hatred with love and many failed. Only in my own generation did the
majority succeeded, but usually somewhere in adulthood.
Every war causes a degree of hatred and never a degree of love. When the
degree of hatred is intense so that it can last for generations, that war
has been conducted wrongly. No amount of political image making can reduce
that hatred or even replace it with love.
>Another issue (and admittedly much clearer ;-) which
>make me feel love is not an 8th E is that it is limited to
>systems that are attributed with love.
I agree. But your formulation brought a point to the front which begs to
be questioned. How does a system become attributed with something?
>At?
I hope that my answers could catalyse and assist some of your and Andrew's
own thinking. I try to avoid writing too explicitly on negative,
destructive things like hatred. But sometimes, like in this reply, i have
to do so that a fuller picture can be developed.
Any country causing hatred in its vincinity or even other parts of the
world is moving on a precarious path. This hatred can be caused by war.
But it can also be caused by a take over of a local corporation by a much
larger one from that country when afterwards the assets of the acquired
corporation is gradually stripped away until only an empty shell remains.
The loss of work and investment opportunities in a miserable economical
climate leads to the hatred.
Basically it all boils down to the severe constraining of people's
creativity. One country may do it to another one, but any organisation may
also do it to people in its immediate environment. One of the hottest
problems of today is how to avoid a destructive interaction between a
system and its surroundings. It is only after i have discovered the 7Es
that i could systematically work towards a solution -- take heed to each
of the 7Es to avoid such a destructive interaction. Unfortunately, the
degree of hatred existing in many parts of a country and in many countries
of the world shows that this problem can either not be solved or is simply
ignored.
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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