> Dear Group: I beg to differ. I believe the purpose of trusting "the
> self" is not because there is any hope of being "right" about anything.
> The purpose of self-trust is that such a process provides the only chance
> we've got to learn from happens next, as we act upon our self-created
> visions of future which are integrated with our creative interpretations
> of the past (our "appreceptive schema"). "True believers" almost always
> seem to get caught up in their own "self-righteousness" which then
> inhibits generative growth as a human.
Dear organlearners,
David, you are more than welcome to differ. In fact, the ability to
accomodate differences is essential to creativity. This is one of the
seven essentialities of creativity. Now, although I acknowledge that you
may even diametrically oppose me, I think that we differ only slightly!
You wrote that "true believers" almost always seem to get caught up in
their own "self-righteousness" which then inhibits generative growth as a
human. But this says nothing fundamentally different from what I have
written, namely, that when a person is beginning to trust himself/herself,
then this person is not learning about himself/herself anymore in a
creative manner. Self-righteousness is to me nothing else than trusting
the self for attaining righteousness. There are so many types of "true
believers" that I dare not try to say what they believe. However,
christians believe that righteousness comes from only one source, namely
Jesus Christ. (See below on the nature of radical/reactionary/rebel
messages.)
You also wrote that the purpose of self-trust is that such a process
provides the only chance we've got to learn from happens next, as we act
upon our self-created visions of future which are integrated with our
creative interpretations of the past (our "appreceptive schema"). Except
for the word "self-trust" which you have used, I agree with what you have
written! I would have preferred to use the word "self-acceptance". By
accepting that I am both creature and creator, I am in a much better
position to interact with reality. I do not think that by such an
acceptance I have invoked trust (see the 5 meaanings in my original
contribution) at all.
In my original contribution I have said that I hestitated for more than a
month before mailing this contribution because of the intese feelings the
issue of trust elicit, especially in the way the bible puts it: trust only
in God. Your response is very mild to what I have experienced, firstly
about myself and then about others hearing this message.
When I first dicovered this message, I could not even imagine what sort of
life can a person live while trusting only in God. Life without trusting
anything else than God seemed to be very bleak to me. Almost every week I
discovered how I implicitly trusted things other than God. Almost every
such a discovery was an intense, mind boggling experience.
Today I know why it had to be like that. The primordial cause of
creativity is entropy production. Entropy is produced by force- flux
pairs. The stronger the force and the swifter the flux of a pair, the more
they contribute to the entropy production. In order to have an emergence
of a new higher order, the entropy production must be increased to break
point (bifurcation).
In 1968 I first observed formally that "to learn is to create".
This observation would probably have remained obscure and
eventually been forgotten, were it not for the entropy
production caused by the message on trust four years later! I
simply had to find out how to live a full life in which trust in
anything else than God played no role. In other words, knowledge
on such a life had to emerge within me. These emrgences
happened, but in ways which I could never have forseen. I have
already told in previous contributions about these emergences. I
will mention two of them:
1 Entropy production is not only the source of both chaos and
order in the material world as Prigogine maintains, but also
in the abtsract world.
2 Emergence will only happen if the seven essentialities of
creativity have been sufficiently matured for such an
emergence.
You may not consider the issue on trust as strongly as the bible puts it:
trust only in God. However, if you wish to experience a deep spiritual
life, you will have to consider the possibility that it has to happen
emergently rather than by a transfer from the outside. Once you have
accepted this possibility, you will have to find out upon what these
emergences feed. The primordial feeding might be on something else than
entropy production. However, should it be entropy production, then you
will have to consider the possibility that radical/reactionary/rebel
messages may drive the entropy production to breakpoint.
The bible has more than enough such radical/reactionary/rebel messages.
Here is another one: love unconditionally (agape)! I have been confronted
many times with the statement that learning without trusting the teacher
is impossible. The learner does not need to trust the teacher - the
learner needs unconditional love from the teacher! The members of an LO
does not need to trust each other - they need the unconditional love of
each other.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>