Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
I dedicate this essay to a specialist physician, dr JF Benson. He is one
of those rare persons who can look at the forest as well as at every tree
in it.
I was physically a very active, strong and healthy person. But four years
ago my bodily functions began to decline. I had an influenza attack and a
week afterwards i was a complete diabete. It was worsened by the fact that
i was allergic to insulin and its substitutes. The GP had no solution. So
as a chemist i decided to go on a protein diet to stay alive, cutting out
as much carbohydrates as possible. The GP thought i was crazy since my
brain requires glucose as fuel, 30% of my bodily consumption. My answer to
him? "What is wrong with the brain of a lion which eats only meat?"
Think of it -- not to eat bread, potatoes, pumpkin, fruit, candy and cake
for the rest of your life. I applied for early retirement because of
medical reasons, but it was not granted. Diabetes alone is not sufficient
reason. I reckoned that my protein diet and thus lack of glucose based
energy would aggreviate the problem, but this made no impression to the
board.
My kidneys began to excrete too much calcium (Ca++) and magnesium (Mg++)
ions. This led to a second problem a year later. I developed crystals of
calcium and magnesium phosphates in my bladder. Eventually one caused a
complete obstruction when it passed from the bladder to the prostrate. I
had a prostectomy.
Two months ago, while working on my small farm, i had a severe heart
failure. I became nausea and lame, but had not any pain. I became too
tired even to sleep. The next morning i visited my GP. Upon tests he
immediately sent me to the Heart ICU of the hospital close by, despite all
my objections. An hour later the specialist physician began to work on me.
The upper sections of the heart was beating twice as fast as the lower
sections -- trachycardi. The heart was working against itself. Death
within 24 hours was inevitable.
Before beginning to treat me, dr Benson asked some curious questions like
"Have you often been in the sun?" and "Do you often have diarrhea?" After
his treatment which included chemical inductions and finally electrical
shocks, i asked him after having recovered why he asked such questions. He
said to me that he has a strong suspicion that i have hemachromatosis. The
colour="chroma" of the blood="hemo" become more purple and the skin gets a
bronze colour.
Hemachromatosis is a genetical disease. It causes the gut to take up iron
endlessly. In a normal person iron is taken up only when it is deficient
in the body. The kidneys cannot excrete any excess iron. Thus the iron
content of the body increases steadily. In my case it is now 1300% too
high.
Too much iron accumulates in all the organs (heart, liver, kidneys, etc.)
and glands (pituitary, thyroid, adrenal, etc.) of the body. It also causes
them to enlarge gradually. Their functions begin to deteriorate steadily.
One by one they begin to fail. Doctors usually treat the first failing
organ as if it is the only problem to overcome. Due to a lack of wholeness
they see the tree, but not the forest -- in more than 90% of the cases of
hemochromatosis.
Then one by one the other trees also get afflicted until it is too late to
do anything about it. Heart failure (30%), liver failure (30%) and cancer
(10%) of an organ or gland are the most common causes of death.
Deteriorating endocrine functions of the glands are often the first to
show up. The person may experience a somatic (bodily induced) depression
which becomes so intense that suicide may be committed. It is impossible
to figure out how many suicides are the result of hemochromatosis. The
person may also experience a loss of libido. It is impossible to figure
out how many divorces are the result of hemochromatosis.
Two genes on two different chromosomes have been identified which cause
hemochromatosis. The first one was identified only as late as 1996. It
seems that there is also a third gene operating since a chromosome
identification of hemochromatosis results only in 85% confirmations.
Why do I write on my medical condition? To seek the sympathy of fellow
learners? No, to tell "Watch the Forest and not the Tree"! Look out for
wholeness and not only identity (sureness). Do not let diversity
(otherness) cloud the picture. See how liveness ("becoming-being")
diminishes. My late farther (from whom i presumably got this
hemochromatosis) suffered the failing of one organ after the other. He
eventually had to take in a handful of pills a day to treat all the
failing organs. He was close to death because of this medication. Finally
a young doctor took them all away, except the heart pills. His health
improved so much that he lived another five years.
His health would have improved much more should the doctors have diagnosed
hemochromatosis early enough. The reason is that hemochromatosis can be
treated. The person has to let (donate) one litre of blood every two
weeks. This reduces the iron content in the body gradually. Some organs
and glands may even regain some of their lost functionalities.
Hemochromatosis is not linked to the sex chromosomes. Thus woman can also
have it. But it shows little effect until they enter their menopause. Then
it hit them much worse than men because of not letting blood anymore
through their menstrual cycle.
Hemochromatosis occurs mostly among people from northern European
(Germanic) descent. Its incidence is about 1:400 in countries like
Switzerland and Scotland. It is vary rare among people of African,
American or Asian descent. When i learned about my condition, i had to
smile -- Hitler with his idea of Arian superiority! Had he known about
hemochromatosis, he would probably have thought different.
My children and other family members will now have to be screened by
chromosome tests for hemochromatosis. If positive, they will have to let
blood periodically so that they can continue with a normal life. I suspect
that my youngest brother also has it. His goiter gave in and he is already
experiencing inflammation of the joints.
An interesting thing which i learned in my student days was that the
spiral of red and white lines on a column in front of a barber's shop
indicate that in medieval times the barber not only cut hair and beard,
but also let the blood of his clients. I thought it to be a silly practice
based on superstition. But now i know better. Perhaps some barber may had
cut his client accidently by his razor. Afterwards the client told about
an improvement in his health. This fortuitous accident eventually became a
standard practice among north Europeans, but improving only the health of
those who had hemochromatosis! I now think the opposite -- any practice
which improves some cases, is not silly. It rather points to too little
learning and thus full knowledge on this practice.
This hemochromatosis drama taught me once again how important it is to
think holistic, to "Watch the Forest and not the Tree." So what has it do
do with Learning Organisations (LOs) because that is the reason why i
write about it? Senge wrote in the appendix of the Fifth Discipline that
wholeness is one of the 11 essences of a LO. Is it possible that an
organisation can have a simple overload (such as iron in hemochromatosis)
which causes that organisation to fail one by one in most of its
departments? I think that it is not only possible, but that it happens
frequently, at least here in South Africa.
What is the treatment of choice? As in hemochromatosis and blood letting,
get rid of that simple overload in a regular manner which the organisation
can cope with. I am reminded here of Christian churches. Their "blood
letting" is the confession of sin and thus getting relieved of guilt. But
what about other kinds of organisations? Here we have the broader picture
of Forgiveness and Reconciliation. It is a topic which was discussed
recently.
However, i think that a Mental Model (MM) can also induce a forest of
misbehaviour rather then merely a single one. Here is an example. It is a
MM that the thoughts of black people (Africa) or red people (America) are
inferior to that of white people (Europe). (The actual case had been that
they thought along totally different cultural lines.) This led to
injustices in all walks (educational, economical, political, religious,
etc.) of life, the injustices in each walk like a tree. When the forest is
seen, it is taken as a justification of the MM as a genetical fact. It is
rather a mental fact that a MM can have such disastrous consequences.
I understand now even better why Mental Models have to be one of the five
disciplines of a LO. A single, prevailent MM may make an organisation very
unhealthy. A LO has to learn how to heal itself by getting rid of such a
MM through learning.
I have tried to explain in the past that the most basic outcome of LEP
(Law of Entropy Production) in any system is the feature
"one-to-many-mapping". That is why we have to "Watch the Forest and not
the Tree". I have restricted myself in the past to positive and
constructive examples. But in hemochromatosis we have a negative and
destructive example. It is not nice to study examples like the latter, but
we have to do it. (To learn it by experience as i am learning with
hemochromatosis is horrible.) When they get of hand, the result may be
fatal.
The possible "one-to-many-mapping" of a MM (Mental Model) on all walks of
life is beginning to intrigue me very much. To my knowledge nobody else
has pointed to this phenomenon. But i can imagine its effect. Is it not
operating in countries having intense turmoil -- Ireland, Congo, Serbia,
East Timor? Some MMs may have disastrous effects on religious, cultural,
political, economical and educational walks of life. The key, i think, is
to ""Watch the Forest and not the Tree".
My own people, the Afrikaners, who formalised the ideology and policy of
apartheid, had a MM causing them to let apartheid be felt on all walks of
life. The MM was that the Afrikaners had been God's gift to Africa and the
rest of the world.
I would welcome the thoughts of you fellow learners on this topic very much.
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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