Replying to LO31167 --
DP writes,
"Dear Tshediso,
I find it difficult to answer your question because I do not know what
type of answer you are looking for. Still, I would like to say that a
learning organisation promotes learning-oriented processes within
itself and develops the capacity to manage the tensions arising out of
the conclicting requirements of organisational life. I think, these
are organisational processes to circumvent organisational
irrationality... in an ongoing manner.
DP "
Hello DP, Tshediso
i would like to point us in another way, if i can.
Let me begin by saying, i find it easy to answer Tshediso's question
because i do not know what type of answer he is looking for.
i remind myself that in the words of At de Lange, 'to learn is to
create'. Is that a classic bootstrapping?
One of my first meetings with 'irrationality' was when i started to
study Freud's classic works on psychoanalysis, especially his work,
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life and also The Interpretation of
Dreams. I have also to mention a much less well publicised paper he
wrote, Thanatos: The Death Instinct, created at the end of his long
life. That is important to say in this context, which i am building,
because it affirms that knowing how to live is but a way of learning
how to die. Most of us being like frightened children in the face of
the word 'death' that learning to unfear oneself can have, imho, a
very great value to life, individual or organizational. Many a board
of directors was carrying a corpse through the streets of the great
cities of the twnetieth century pretending it was a living thing, when
what it issued was really maggots and worms. (OK ;-) ...(Enron will
do, but there are many, many others and many much smaller, and many
that espouse 'the good' while covering the disenfranchised of the
world, especially in Africa, Latin America and parts of East Asia)
Freud taught me how on a less gross level of thinking, the way my mind
works when free at varying levels is to positively make use of the
most fascinating connections, lyrical, visual, verbal, cultural, and
anthropological to make fit (sense make) what often most urgently
needs fitting (fitting "=" art --> increasing wholeness)
A primary characteristic of a learning organization is a development
of a new characteristic (as) in (of) its total capacity for (about)
(un)consciousness, BOTH inward bound AND outward bound, with all loops
inbetween (loopiness "=" autopoiesis). (Bortoft's idea via Goethe -
more increasing wholeness - and that we need create ''new organs of
perception'')
The sound of water says what I think...
-‘To push water around in a bucket is one thing, to push the river
is quite another.’
"There was a man who had the genius of a sage, but not the Tao. I have
the Tao but not the genius. I wished to teach him, -To teach the Tao
of a sage to a man who has genius, seems to be an easy matter. But no,
I kept on telling him; after three days, he began to be able to
disregard all worldly matters, anxieties about gain, status and loss.
After his having disregarded all worldly matters, I kept on telling
him; after seven days, he began to be able to disregard all external
things as separate entities. After his having disregarded all external
things, I kept on telling him; after nine days, he became able to
disregard his own existence as an ego. Having disregarded his own
existence, he was enlightened. Having become enlightened, he was then
able to gain the vision of the One. Having the vision of the One he
was then able to transcend the distinction of past and present. Having
transcended the realm of the past and the present, he was then able to
enter the realm where life and death are no more. Then, to him,
destruction of life did not mean death, nor the prolongation of life
an addition to the duration of his existence. He would follow
anything; he would receive anything. To him everything was in
destruction, everything was in construction. This is called
tranquility in disturbance. Tranquility in disturbance means
perfection."
I learned that text some ten years ago, i have always liked it. It
reminds me of Watts, the Englishman who became an adept at Zen
meditation bit admittedly was somewhat more wild than today's rather
over-(inwardly)organized ((prop;-)one;-)nts)) cushions akimbo. For
Watts, if one could not meditate in the corner of a car factory one
could not meditate at all. Who among the officianados has had to
meditate, out of necessity in the pounding of the steel press
workshops of the car factory housing twenty thousand souls all through
some dark night?
To live more fully in the great circle that is SPONTANEITY.
I was driving along the countryside the other day and i heard a voice,
somwhat disembodied say to me, " experience is most full when senses
through ones sensory organs, in ones mental apparatus and in ones
spirit/soul allatthesamemoment." One couldimagine them allljoinedup;-)
Some say that our civilsation is having to try to learn how to
immitate nature's way. NATURE'S WAY. That, writ smaller, our
technology must be let free, loose...a la Kevin Kelly in his book 'Out
of Control' from which the words of the Tao above emerged for me one
day, about ten years ago.
I have always noted personally here and in nearly every other forum of
learning and/or complexity, how little real contact there is shared
between the consciousness of the individual and the consciousness of
the world ( NATURE). At is one exception. I am very thankful to him
for some occasional background conversations about the deeper nature
of LO, the deeper nature of human spirituality, the deeper nature of
the spontaneity (spontaneous emergences) among humankind and nature
and God (whatever his/her name).
Without a better deeper appreciation of the aspects sketched above,
espcially an increased capacity for art, for walking the fractal lines
that join senses, mind and spirit and nature there will be no LO's for
all the hype. LO is a LOnging, perhaps never to be realised. Perhaps
like many creative people and peoples it never will attain the
pinnacle of its own arc, and missing itself at some crucial junction
fall to the ground into so much dust.
I heard another voice the other day, too. It was Albert Einstein. He
was saying that, " ....as the circle of light increases, so the
circumference of dark increases proportionately." - beside me i have
Capra's Epilogue, let me if i may take his voice and bend it to the
question..." In trying to understand this mystery called an LO men
have followed many different paths, among them the ways of the
scientist and mystic, but htere are many more, the ways of the poets,
the children, clowns, shamans, to name but a few. These ways have
resulted in different descriptions of the world, both verbal and
non-verbal. All are valid and useful in the context in which they
arose. All of them, however, are only models, descriptions, or
representations of REALITY and are therefore limited.."
Of all the organs i believe the eye is supreme. And if one day a
scientists ''disCOVERS'' those ''imaginal cells'' in our eye, as they
infer they can in the brain, then i would be a very, very happy
person;-). I believe in my own visions. I believe that there is a
profound link between the hand and the eye. I have to, i am an artist.
An artist who learned how to die long before i came here, to this
little corner of my mind, ...and yours?
I believe in the power of prayer as Miriam displays it to me in her
work with those who have gazed the abyss. I have some powerful lessons
yet for those who would stop that POWER. Much tearing;-) for our
erstwhile prophets. Mmmmmm.
private letter of some years ago...
"Is it not sad, but so typical of what we have to try and escape from
when the great Goethe, after he met Beethoven only once, WROTE that
"altogether he is an utterly untamed personality". The Beethoven who
accomplished what few others could -- telling with sound (and not a
score on paper, performed by artists, on whatever non-spontaneous
instruments) about "deep creativity", doing it much better than I ever
will be able to do with words. I do try and copy his work in my words
and someday someone might hear it in the spirit."
YES! but (k)not here, dear At de Lange, not here. Netti, netti ;-)
"A black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend
to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them
appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. This
distortion, called 'the hindsight bias', prevents us from adequately
learning ..."
..and the sheep and the little lambs?
''That is important to say in this context, which i am building,
because it affirms that knowing how to live is but a way of learning
how to die.''
Indeed, Victory has many fathers! And defeat?
Love,
Andrew
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