Replying to LO30948 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell wrote:
>HelLO dear At ;-)
>
>it is amusing to me how, those who most commend
>to us courses for 'living in worlds with no foundations'
>are spending an awful lot of time and energy building
>'virtual temples' as foundations for personal
>reputations, with toll gates at the temple doors. I too
>have continued to follow the streams here at LO.
Greetings dear Andrew.
I love that helLO. Thanks Jan Lelie for pointing it out to us.
I also had my bouts of megalomania on this list so that I am in no
position at all to judge others. Meanwhile it became clear to me that
in a true LO (Learning Organisation) there is no reason for any of its
members to build a personally owned 'virtual temple'.
Yet I think we have to learn how to discern between a person who owns
a 'virtual temple' and one who has a 'passionate fury' (as Copernicus
called it) for some definite advancement. An important difference
between these two persons is the wholeness with which they act. The
person who owns a 'virtual temple' feels feathers (little) for
wholeness.
The tragedy is that others who have not learned what wholeness
involves, cannot distinguish between the two. Jan Smuts, the father of
holism ("increasing wholeness") lost the election in 1948 because of
this reason. Apartheid ("anti-wholeness") came into power. In 1992
apartheid was dismantled. But the lack of wholeness still prevails. It
is still causing many distresses.
>i have nothing to say now directly, about the subjects
>lines currently under discussion. i do want to pass on
>these word from an inveterate learner...
I have found it wise to keep my mouth shut in a discussion when there
was little for me to learn. I have seen others do it too. What
surprised me most is that they begin to participate in dialogues when
their learning began to benefit by it.
Learners by heart who find little opportunity to learn among others,
tend to become loners. But when they make contact with a fellow
learner, they simply overwhelm him/her telling about themselves. It is
like a dam wall breaking. Let us break these dam walls with LOs.
>?oSometimes one sees simply the instrument for
>transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge
>to the growing generation. But that is not right.
>Knowledge is dead; however, a school serves the living.
>It should develop in the individuals those qualities and
>capabilities which are of value for the welfare of the
>commonwealth. That does not mean that individuality
>should be destroyed and the individual become a mere
>tool of the community, like a bee or an ant.
Dear Andrew, I beg to differ from you. Information is dead while
knowledge lives. A school as we usually know it is also a stupid
place. Young people are taken out of the world and put in the school
so as to be taught about the world from which they have been taken.
Furthermore, while actively interacting with the world around them
after school, they are taught nothing. The best at school they have to
content themselves with are the experiments during science classes.
The growing generation does not deserve such stupidity. But since they
are exposed to it, little become of the values and qualities of the
commonwealth.
I agree whole heartedly with you that a school "should develop in the
individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for
the welfare of the commonwealth." However, this is not possible with
information mongering. It is only possible when the individual's
knowledge is based on practical experience. Information is of great
value, but only when a person has the knowledge to digest it. IT, for
all its hype, cannot do this.
>In this attempt I cannot lay any claim to being an authority,
>especially as intelligent and well-meaning men of all
>times have dealt with educational problems and have
>certainly repeatedly expressed their views clearly about
>these matters. From what source shall I, as a partial
>layman in the realm -, derive courage to expound opinions
>with no foundations except personal experience and
>personal conviction? If it were really such a scientific matter,
>one would probably be tempted to silence by such
>considerations." Albert Einstein
The experiences and convictions of any person has high authority for
me. You have such authority. Any of these persons is clearly not
chained to the 'information temple". I can expect much wholeness from
such a person which is most valuable to me. But the mind of someone
who memorises information as knowledge and unlearn it when not in
fashion anymore is like a computer HD (Hard Disk). In the operating
systems of Macrohard -- and that is a 'virtual temple' if I have ever
seen one -- that HD gets fragmented gradually with files stored and
afterwards deleted. Sooner or later it will hang up, losing all the
information toiled for. Please defragment your HD.
I shall never forget a certain incident. I was attending a congress of
a political party in the early seventies. I was not pleased with its
development because of power blocks trying to take control. I did not
know what to say or do. Then a farmer delegate stood up, saying: "I
did not even finished school, but I know what I want. I do not want
this congress to be controlled by what seems to be intellectuals
without experience. I will now leave." He got up and left. Then I knew
what to do. I walked out too.
>there are rich memories for me, deeply set in this
>splace called the Rick Karash LO. I can recall in the
>past, both formally and tacitly how you would
>commend to me that in times of distress and hurt I
>seek out and enjoy 'emergences that will leave you
>speechless!'...what a brilliant think to say ;-)
I share your deep memories. Thank you Rick.
[Host's Note: It is my pleasure! ..Rick]
Languages can only catch up with emergences -- they cannot ever
precede them. That is why I used the word 'speechless'. A teacher
really his/her salt worth, will look at learners very closely. During
any emergent learning they become speechless, although they usually
act very strange. Some will slap their heads, other will pull their
hair or contort their faces. Some will even hop up and down on their
chairs. A few will even froze completely, but with the eyes still
glittering. When I see this happening, I know that I have succeeded in
guiding them into greater knowledge rather than memorising
information.
What a lesson we can learn from Beethoven. When he was composing in
his head with hands clenched behind his back and walking around with
his powerful figure, he often shook his head and uttered moronic
noises. When he did write his creations in his curious notebook --
which often happened -- it was in such a cryptic manner that even the
best musicians could not make anything out of it. Why did he write
these cryptic notes despite his keen memory? I think that it was to
let his tacit knowing emerge into formal knowledge -- the notes being
the information concerning it.
Michael Faraday, the greatest experimental scientist ever, did it
otherwise. Whenever he made a new experimental discovery based on a
hunch (mental emergence), he danced with joy and sang with laughter.
Even he considered his personal experiences and convictions as the key
to his success. None of the information mongers will ever convince me
of anything else.
>i think i know that a part of your mission in learning
>here has been to set forth and articulate in part what
>in part Senge is saying here (see Url for pdf),- about
>what he learned from a man in a distant country. Maybe
>Peter Senge is saying he knew it, but not fully knew
>it...he must have knewed it ;-) because he'd met Bohm's
>rich thinklings well before master Nan's rich thinklings.
My mission since 1970 had been to guide any person in learning
authentically. To do so I had to learn far more and faster than all of
them. Most important of all, I had to learn authentically myself. That
had been most difficult because I was deluged with so much information
what learning is supposed to be.
Were it not for two of my classes at school acting as tacit LOs,
Senge's seminal work would have been lost on me. My dear wife Alicia
whom you have met, sometimes tell me that they were the two most
beautiful classes ever she had contact with. She had to act as
"mother" (guardian) to them during several outings. But they took all
the work out of her hands, giving her rather a well earned rest!
>maybe there is a right time to know the things
>we need to know in space/time? Maybe it is ALL
>a preparation.
Of course there is a right time. It is determined by the laws of
complexity based on the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity). For
example, the LRC (Law of Requisite Complexity) says that you cannot
emerge into a higher level of spirituality unless have experienced
sufficient otherness. I became tacitly aware of these laws as a
teacher. But I could not formulate them and no book could assist me.
Now I can write for days on them.
For what reason must we become prepared through level upon level of
emergences? I personally believe that it is to meet my Maker. Why he
had chosen the narrow path of constructive emergences, wanting me to
avoid the broad path of destructive immergences, is still a mystery to
me. But what is not a mystery to me anymore is that unconditional love
is the ultimate guide on this path.
>i tried to explain (badly) to Claus Otto Scharmer a
>while back, how I envisaged this ''becoming being''
>in an archetypal image ( i will share that another
>time maybe)...but it was a strange resultant image,
>it was about bending in electrical cuurents, loops
>within loops...until it arrived in a bowl shape, or a
>'U' shape as Otto perceives many of his process
>images.
Andrew, it is also difficult for me to explain clearly this
"becoming-being" duality of life to others. When I try it, I think it
is badly. The description "I am what I become" keeps on coming to my
mind. For me the "artist's images", whether intended for seeing,
hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting, should have this quality. (Yes,
even a cook can become an artist!) This makes nature the best artist.
The best I can up with is that liveness is a "becoming-being".
>Anyhow, my head was full of lables, and then, one
>day i was with a girl just like Vikki, 'no schooling'.
>It fell out of my diary. She picked it up...'what is that
>supposed to be?'...'i don't know V, what do you see?'...
>"Mmmmm...she turns it this way and that...i see a womb."
>
>At, in a thousand years of looking, i would never have
>seen a womb.
Every medical student has to dissect a female cadaver and look among
other organs at its womb. But I understand what you mean -- looking
from the outside is far different to "looking" from the inside which
Vikky did. It is the same in deserts. Looking at pictures or paintings
of them is far different to experiencing them in person. There I
frequently become aware of terrifying frights or lovely surprises as
well as loneliness or togetherness -- opposites blending into one
whole.
Protected by the womb from the world, yet connected by it to the
world. Protected by the LO from the world, yet connected by it to the
world.
>i have spoken to many people in the past several
>years about safe spaces, bowls, sanctuaries, retreats,
>caves...no-ne had ever spoken of a 'womb' That
>was a very wise observation on her part, wasn't it.
>I was speechless, for a moment.
That is what schools should have been -- wombs for minds. That is what
I tried to be -- a midwife for mental emergences or spiritual births.
But the system of formal education gave me little opportunity.
Socrates with whom Wester civilisation began had a similar mission of
spiritual midwifery.
Even trying very hard, a single learner-teacher cannot function
effectively as a "womb". But when an OO (Ordinary Organisation)
becomes a LO (Learning Organisation), that LO functions far better as
the "womb". Hence it is a great tragedy that so few organisations for
learning function as LOs. They call themselves a LO, but what a
contradiction in Sengian terms.
>here, for anyone interested is another image, it may
>have been in the 4MB file i put on deposit here a few
>weeks ago. Maybe people can open it, see what they
>see. i am open for questions about the imagery.
http://www.dialogonleadership.org/ArtWork/PeterSengeDoLOneIssue.pdf
Forgive me that I cannot say that it is beautiful for me -- but it is
indeed very mysterious.
>just one thing about the image - there is no original
>- so whatever you find you find on the interface
>between your eye and your mind. Sir Robert Penrose
>tells that the eye is an organ of (connected directly
>up to) the brain/mind set. in which case i revise my
>sentence to say, whatever you find is found between
>your mindseye and.....the light?
What to find in between?
Goethe said that the truth is this interaction between our inner world
and the outer world. How can we interact with it without the five
sense organs like the eyes to guide us? One thing has become clear to
me, I can detect the outer material world with my five sense organs,
but the spiritual world I can experience only internally. This emerges
into tacit knowing.
This is by far a mystery to me. God says that he is spirit and lives
in those who want to be guided by him. But yet I cannot detect God by
any of my five sense organs. I can only sense him with suitable
spiritual emergences. I can groan and suffer like Job did some 4000
years ago, but in the end I have to admit that the truth had not been
told to me. I have to experience it.
I firmly believe that truth has to be experienced through the sense
organs. If I want to help somebody else to know the truth, I have to
act in such a manner that it leads to truthful experiences. One way is
to write. But it interacts only with the eyes. What about hearing,
feeling, smelling or tasting? They are absent from cyberspace. This
makes cyberspace so treacherous. These experiences are also absent
from treatises on logic -- the formal study of truth.
Hearing is also treacherous when information is spoken. But when it is
conveyed in a musical manner, it seems to become honest. Last Sunday
during our religious service we sang an Afrikaans song ("All nations
praise the Lord)") composed by Braam Hanekom in 1993, a year after the
political transformation into the New South Africa. Its vibrancy gave
me the "goose flesh" as seldom before. How I wished that fellow
learners could understand Afrikaans and sing Braam's song. If we
cannot sing the truth in which words and melody become one, what worth
has our struggle for finding the truth?
>My love to you ''dear'' < At,
Thank you Andrew. I am glad that you participated once again on the
LO-list. My love to you too. You have a sensitivity which few others
care to inform us about. You are so brave. But such a sensitivity
often leads to great hurt. Cry, yet do not give up on your vigour and
composure. Several people had been fired locally the the past couple
of months for having a sensitivity towards life and creativity. What a
tragedy which has befallen such authentic learners. The organisations
in which they worked were as far from LOs as the east is from the
west. I salute their bravery. I could easily have become one of them,
getting more outspoken by the years.
The world is becoming a spooky place. Pollution is destroying our
environment. Wars are started on disinformation and mergers on
misinformation. Corporative crimes outfigure petty crimes by several
digits. Some executive managers who more than double their income per
year keep their companies profitable by firing hundreds of workers so
as to save on the workers' salaries. Intimidation and nepotism have
become the key strategies of so-called social advancement programs.
The one-eyed cyclops seems to rule the blind. What a catastrophe in
the making.
The last few months I got deeply under the impression how precarious
and precious life (physical and spiritual) is. What troubles me deeply
is that the more life is in danger, the more many people care less for
it. I am not afraid to die, but I find it horrible to cause death. The
breath of spiritual life is learning. Whoever impedes learning is
causing spiritual death. I think we have to make more of it that
learning organisations are at least living organisations. What does it
takes to live? How thrilled I will be to see a LO-dialogue in depth on
this topic.
I believe that authentic learning as individuals and organisations is
our only strategy to undo these unholy schemes mentioned above. Five
centuries ago Dante informed us that the rich want to own our souls
with money. They can't unless we give up on authenticity.
Here in South Africa, a small country compared to others, tens of
thousands of people find them without compassion when organisations
drop them as hot potatoes. Shady schemes to hollow them out abound.
Crime does the rest. The rich carry on as if the poor do not exist. It
often makes me cry. What have these unfortunate people done to deserve
it? Nothing but to give the best years of their life.
Andrew and fellow learners, because of my deteriorating medical
condition, I cannot participate as before on the LO-list. Please have
patience with me, but do not get concerned. Since I am not yet dead,
it is not any matter of any concern. Let us be happy! I repeat, I am
not dead. I am merely taking a rest. The spirit lives on, even though
the body may die. Is that not a wonderful thought? Let us learn
together -- the spirit of the LO.
Andrew, keep up with your good work. You are like an angel of the
light.
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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