Dear LO'ers,
I think that many of us miss the regular feeding of our thoughts (or
is it tickling?) by the contributions of At de Lange. I do. I realy
hope so intense that At is able to recover and to contribute to this
list. A small letter (diamond of South Africa) once in a month is for
me already sufficient.
Although, At has not left an empty space in me. Many of his
contributions are smoothly boiling in the backyards of my mind. One of
his main ideas are the seven essentialities (7 E's) of creativity -
1. becoming-being (liveness)
2. identity-categoricity (sureness)
3. associativity-monadicity (wholeness)
4. connect-beget (fruitfullness)
5. quantity-limit (spareness)
6. quality-variety (otherness)
7. open-paradigm (openness)
I think that most of us were impressed of these 7 E's when we saw them
for the first time. But seeing is something else than working with. My
experience is that the full weight of these essentialities becomes
clear and clearer after attempts to recognise them in all sorts of
environments (sport, organizations, language, chemistry, kitchen,
nature, etc). It is fascinating to recognise and work with them as
building blocks of a construction-in-becoming. Perhaps some of us have
tried to discover more than seven. Why seven, and why these, why not
another one? Although one is never sure in this life, I agree with At
that seven seems the maximum.
Recently, I was thinking and working again with the seven E's. And to
my own surprise I was again thinking of this holy number of seven. To
sustain my thoughts, it is probably wise to refer to a contribution of
At from the past: LO . In that contribution, At has illustrated the
meanings of the 7 E's in the kitchen - baking a cake. The cake as a
creative product after a process with several ingredients. From that
contribution it became clear that if one or more of the 7 E's is not
in harmony, the cake will become a waster. I invite you strongly to
read that contribution and focus on one of the E's - quality. It seems
so natural that quality should be one of the 7 E's; perhaps it is one
of the clearest. To follow my thoughts, I invite you also to think in
various scales. Think in large and think in small. The cake is in this
case large, ingredients are small, molecules of the ingredients even
smaller. If the cake becomes a waster as a result of non-optimal
presence of one or more of the E's, the quality of the cake is bad.
What about the ingredients? Does the same reasoning for the cake
counts also for the ingredients? In my mind yes. The ingredients too
are creations, creative products. This the quality of the ingredients
should also be dependent of the seven E's. So the 7 E's are operating
on different scales. But what is quality? this is a somewhat losely
defined word. If we talk about the quality of a cake in relation to
the 7 E's, as At did in his contribution, what does the essentiality
'quality' (of the ingredients) in respect to the final quality of the
cake? Each of the ingredients is also the result of the complex
working of 7 E's. Is here not a dog biting his own tail? I think so.
Although I always hesitate to challenge At's thoughts, I think that
the essentiality 'quality' is the combined result of six E's. Quality
seems to me not an essentiality, but a result. The quality of the
creative building is defined by six building blocks.
I hope that I am clear in this difficult matter. Perhaps this dialogue
seems somewhat academic. However, for me it is necessary to comprehend
all six (or are there still seven??) essentialities for the birth of
creative thoughts. I sincerely hope that At is able to read this
message.
All the best,
Leo Minnigh
--"leo minnigh" <minnigh@dds.nl>
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