Note: dear people who do not like 'ramblers', hit ''delete'' now;-)
Philip Keogh,
asks LO,
>Are we concentrating too much on the organisations left brain
>functions? What are the organisations right brain functions and how
>do we develop them? I suspect At and Andrew (ACampnona) will have
>some thoughts here as their contributions are very holistic in nature
>(this is not to say that everyone else's are not).
One of the unfunniest tracts i ever read, back in the seventies was
Freud's work on humour - i just did not get the jokes! What was the
title, or sub-title ?...the Psychopathology of Everyday Life. I dare
say it's all 'out of date now, anyway ;-)
There are, i would think, a great many ways to approach a more whole
understanding of the world. I sense, in holistic mode, an almost
universal 'quality' adhering to much of what gets espoused in books
the multi-media of televisual and telecommunication (internet)...it is
a (the) quality of STRESS, a very tensile stress.
This tensile stress seems to close down the mind/body of author and
reader (giver-receiver) to what is real and happening. So much so that
what i read and digest (or knot as the cases may be) seems to have
this quality of an definitive, learned, expert answer (single) coming
before the questions (many). Maturana has some very powerful insights
to my mind ;-) on the way we conserve an all pervading innate
nastiness, idealising a kind of intellectual supremicist dynamic
through our schools, formal and informal. He even sees it reflected in
the giving out of patents in industry.
i have stopped now to re-read what i have written. I can see now many
ways from this point in space time that my contribution could go...it
could go (staying with names, idealogies, philosophies, sciences, arts
that we might be vaguely or distinctly familar with)...back to the
times of the neolithic people, and to explore what ways they
negotiated the world that they found themselves (theme)-(selves) i
just typo'd) ''embedded'' in and ''embodiments'' of; from the core and
shared archetype of homo sapien to the shattered twenty first century
and very possibly over educated and under cultivated (wo)man.
i could, and i will NOW jump out to the human historical aspect (save
as observor) and look at the kingdom animalia ;-)...which At has often
used to spark our thinking on a more global scale...(Meerkats and
''Bucket''!)...but now i have the work of peter Beamish on my mind.
Heaven knows how i found his work. I think the chain went from a list
serve on Evolutionary biology and or complexity, that was talking
about the inventor of ''Process Grammars'', Michael Leyton was someone
who i shared some of my arting with a few years back, in the fateful
summer of 2001...and another listserver connected to that was the Time
and Physics one, on which peter Beamish shares his wondrous journeys
into the collective soul of the great whales et al. ( ...one species
of which, with the massively long fins has a name which means ''great
wings''...and makes me think again, of Angels)...
Listen in " ...Yesterday we lay peacefully alongide a 102 ft fin
whale, believed to be the largest animal in the northern hemisphere
(now that) potentially larger blue whales were killed earlier by man.
We have now saved The Great Whales, so now can we save ourselves?"
This living creature was born to his mother before the Great War
(1914-18) of the last century began, before Modern Physics was born,
before man flew, before man put his ugly print on the face of the
moon...and today, somewhere in the North Atlantic she glides for you
and i...she carries in her whole becoming-being a message from
eternity to eternity...i do not have the means to express it in a way
you might understand...why don't you type into google ''peter
Beamish'' ''great whales'' and "Trinity Bay" see what you find...
i could go to Confucius, whose followers (the Analects) in developing
his short formal written wisdom (long tacit gift) managed to pre-empt
much of what today passes for a ''modern'' wise insight. There is one
passgage i like especially, wherein he counsels his peers not to
overspecialise in a time of complexity...;-)
i could...I will go back to an event, an embodied event in my life,
Philip. It will involve me in an embodied multi-part and multi-time
multi-media conversation, one in wholeness as old as the Neoliths, as
visceral as the birth of a whale or child, within the minds of men who
would value the changes of the world taking care to foster and nurture
to ask if..."the most significant and potential powerful by products
of organizational science are its forms of language -- its images,
concepts, metaphors, narratives and the like. When placed in motion
within the culture, these discourses may -- if skilfully fashioned --
be absorbed within ongoing relations. Such relations thereby stand to
be transformed. Not only does this place a premium on reflexive
critique within the profession...but it also invites the scientist to
enter the process of creating realities....Rather than "telling it
like it is," the challenge for the post-modern scientist is to "tell
it as it might become." Needed are those willing to be audacious, to
break the barriers of common sense by offering new forms of theory, of
interpretation, or of intelligibility."...(jump.../\... Progogine said
exactly the same thing in effect, in the early eighties)...OK...
i was in the garden with the flowers, the birds and the bees buzzing
around me inside and out along with thoughts, emotions, sensation of
so many kinds and inter-affecting subtleties one could not dissect
them into discrete, patentable (sic) categories...the dominant colour
was blood red - (with white and medium) baby flesh pink. Then i read
this...(long citation) because i had shared some images i had in my
mind out of Maturana's thinkings...
Today, in our "market-oriented" cultures, we continually hear that
competition is the natural way for humans, just as, it is claimed, it
is in nature. This, we are told, is "survival of the fittest, the
strongest", and it will ultimately yield "progress". Yet, strangely
... when we observe our reaction to people in misfortune or disaster
(where a "competitive" advantage immediately presents itself), we
generally find ourselves feeling sympathy, caring and nurturance ...
when we are in work, we find we are most satisfied and productive when
we cooperate with our fellow workers ... when our closest pets
experience us in sadness or bereavement, there is something about
their presence that we humans might call empathy for our condition.
So, in these observations in daily life, I claim that we do not see
"competition" operating, we see love, mutual respect, caring. If a
coherent explanation of humanness could show that human beings are
biologically loving (cooperative) beings, and that "competition" and
"hierarchy" and "control" are cultural impositions which negate our
humanness, how would our awareness be changed, and how might our
behaviours come to differ? I am a biologist who is interested in
explaining humanness, so I am interested in explaining what takes
place in daily life, and in explaining how, over evolutionary time,
humanness arose. What is a human being? What do we see when we claim
someone to be human? I say that a human being is a living system
living in conversations, where a conversation is an entwining of
language and emotion ... as the emotion changes, the language changes,
as the language changes the emotion changes. I claim that rationality
emerges in language, that all rationalities are founded in emotions,
and so there are an infinite number of rationalities, or realities. We
experience this in daily life when in love we can do certain things,
things which make sense or are coherent, which we cannot do when we
are in anger. I also claim that language is our human manner of
living together, and is not a communication "tool". It is a
coordination, or dance, of behaviours that has become more complex.
For instance, pointing is an operation in language, where we humans
look in the direction of the pointing and not at the finger, while my
cat, outside of language, only looks at my finger. I claim that
language takes place as one coordinated dance or behaviour coordinates
a second, that we live in it, that it can only arise in a mutual dance
(and so always requires two beings), and that love is central to the
development of this increased complexity and therefore to what makes
us human. How is this so? Well, language involves dramatically
increased complexity in relationship and for language to be conserved,
and to become a manner of living, this increased complexity of
relationship must be maintained. The only way this can take place is
where the beings live in mutual respect, caring, and love. If the
relationship is one of competition, control or aggression, there will
be fracture or parting or withdrawal or death, and language will not
be conserved. So I claim that for language to have arisen and to have
begun to be conserved some 3 million years ago, the beings in which
this took place must have been living in love, and, for a lineage to
have formed, this must have existed in their biology. In other words,
I am saying that, understanding language in the way I do, it follows
logically that human beings have evolved as biologically loving
beings, otherwise language would never have become our manner of
living. How is it then that the history of humanity in the last 3,000
years speaks so much of war, misery, and injustice. I claim that to be
human is to be capable of anything which humans can do. Humans can
love and can hate, can nurture and can kill, can heal and can torture,
and they can do all these things once language is established and
conserved. All possibilities are open to us once language has become
our manner of living, and what results will in general be formed
within the prevailing culture. Our European culture is one of
patriarchy, and patriarchy has appropriation (or ownership) as central
... appropriation of land, of fertility, of objects of all sort, of
life itself (we only need look to recent decisions in patent law to
see this). So, in patriarchy, control and hierarchy and negation
become conserved, and humanness becomes incidental. Yet within our
culture, I think we continue to live a love-based childhood, and that
patriarchy becomes impressed on us only as we grow into adulthood.
This results in a fundamental schism for us, memories of humanness
coexisting with the negation of humanness. That this is so can be a
compelling awareness, for in recognising this, we have the possibility
of a different world, a world based in love, mutual respect and care,
where the experience of the other is one of acceptance simply because
he or she is a human being. That is a world based in humanness, and
that is a world I, personally, prefer. (Footnote: I want to emphasise
that I am not saying this as an opinion, nor am I trying to sway
anyone to agree with me, nor do I have privileged access to the
"truth" ... I claim that all our "truths" arise, and only arise, as
preferences in our coexistence. As a scientist, I simply want to
rigorously explain, clearly stating my starting point and central
proposition. In the space here provided, I have not been able to do
all this, not been able to argue from first principles. I can only
claim that, given more time and space, I can adequately support what I
say.) Close lengthy citation.
Written by David Mendes, February 1997, in consultation with Humberto
Maturana reproduced with permission from David Mendes by Andrew
Campbell 8th August 21.50 GMT
David is a Feldenkrais practioner. (Google David Mendes, Feldenkrais
and you will get his pages) ...he knows and has worked with Maturana,
so i valued his feedback. He said i should send my work to Maturana,
but not mind if he did not reply, because he was not always given to
replying ;-) (i am ''sitting with'' that;-) ...
This brings me to the thorny 'thing' we have often had here, about
length and space. To cut to the chase...some like it long and some
like it short...i think the symbolism of that ''angst'' is far more
enlightening than the often ''red herring'' reasoning that purports to
preference one to the other for 'objective' aka 'nice' and (i am after
all only being considerate to the whole community) reasons...BUT Aha!
No more room for the road today!
For those still here to hear..."-In every action what is primarily
intended by the doer, whether he acts from natural necessity or out of
free will, is the disclosure of his own image." Dante ...so much for
''soft woolen wash'' aspects of NLP eh! "
"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each
small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire
tapestry." -- Richard Feynman.
And i would know if...if the same people who miss nature's point are
the same peole who so esteem the short, truncated in this realm. What
'this' realm? This realm ;-) "Andrew, the Internet is a place, it is
an environment, it is made up of people. It is not a mere new
technology; it is a new way for co-operating; for sharing and for
caring. Those who can recognize this human aspect will find success in
the new world. They alone will understand that the artificial is
rooted in a deeper reality and reality is rooted in our hearts.
-Vint Cerf. Father;-) of the Internet.
Well, my picture, my tiny senti-metered ;-) picture ...i was bending
over the rickety painting table...i am immersed in the doings of my
knowings in a sketchpad using a lot of pigment...it is starting to
look like incohate void...i am swimming in a flurry of colour and
forms are sinking and rising, as are my hopes for an end i can call an
'image'. Well, the image did get resolved...and a few weeks later,
torn from its fellow leaves in the book, i turn it through the ''white
hot gates'' of this microchip technology into something i can send
around the WHOLE world, into eyes, via photons, resting there in
mind's eyes for ever (the mind does never forget) to do her silent
unworded, inscripted work. Then just before i hit a send, i see the
tiniest detail...somehow, a tiny, tiny leaf has fallen from the bush i
work under, maybe a bird dropped it...i cannot know that level of
detail, it is too buried in the inderterminacies of this WHOLE WORLD.
And i recalled how His Holiness the Dalai Lama had, through an act of
compassion toward a tiny insect on his chair's arm, picked it up (it
had broken a leg) with a paper tissue his monk had brought over to him
for that very purpose, and it was taken outside to perhaps gain some
advantage ;-)...(This seeing, acting brought the conference to a
STOP;-)...so the leaf and the insect seemed now, in my viscera, bonded
;-)...PRESS SEND...
Feedback loop, now, from young anonymous woman friend ..." Andrew, at
first i could not possibly understand how that image, - which is so
very personal to you could have any relevance to me. Then i was having
a bath (to relax) and suddenly the picture appeared. I remembered in
your note how you spoke of the tiny flower that opened as the Sun
opened, and they kissed, and i felt suddenly kissed all over."
Now, when i received that note i decided that i would not send the
image to His Holiness the Dalai Lama ( i wanted to because of his love
for Varela and the incident of the insect happened when they were
together for the last time..here in Earth;-)...but i would send it to
this young lady.
Well...my gardening experience is not quite over yet, because i am a
picture creator as well as a tender of pictures, so i do not just care
for pictures, but i create them out of nothing ;-)...sometimes, most
oft' sometimes i destroy them once they are made into electricity
;-)...no matter, no mind...
I will finish with an entirely different (or is it) conversation,
between Claus Otto Scharmer, Arie deGeus, the larger world...a
conversation i began to listen to because of our host Rick Karash's
powers of presenicing and envisioning...and the story contains for me
a vision yet to be made more real. It is a vision something like a
womb, a new culture. So, i can only close this circuitous loop by
pointing to the painting, and in pointing i have to hope with all my
heart that you will see more than the finger, more than the image,
more than the interview, more than the flower, more than the
co-creators, more than the great whales, more than the name that mean
'great wings', more than the un-named girl, more than... to what
informs all of those things, that you could travel the WHOLE world
starting out from the one idea...but i have now forgotten what that
was...;-)
http://www.dialogonleadership.org/ArtWork/AriedeGeusDoL%20MilkLoveSpace.pdf
http://www.dialogonleadership.org/interviewdeGeus.html
i will start again;-) with a kiss! ''x'' for your little children, if
you have any. Pass it on, Philip, down the line ;-)...Maybe one day
your children will meet Otto's little ones...Now there is a thought
that increases my wholeness. And sends another tear rolling through
into the world...;-)
love,
Andrew
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