School/Business Systems LO15677

Mnr AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Fri, 7 Nov 1997 15:01:46 GMT+2

Replying to LO15588 --

Dear Organlearners,

Steve Renne <srenne@d300.kane.k12.il.us> writes in LO15588:

> I am an educational administrator in a large school district in Illinois.
> For the past several months a colleague and I have been working on a
> special project

...snip... (on a school community).
> I would like to share a few thoughts from this dialogue and would
> welcome comments to the list or to my address.
>
> One theme which emerged was the need to develop a "work ethic" in
> students. This concept seemed to incorporate several concepts including
> self-motivation, teamwork, punctuality, dependability, continual
> self-improvement, etc. Yet I sensed a lack of consensus in the group as
> to how the workplace develops and supports this ethic.
...snip...

Dear reader, skip this long contribution if you are not interested in what
I think has to do with the healing of our civilisation. For the rest, I
will discuss a ethic which connects work to topics such as entropy, free
energy, chaos, order, organisation, complexity, emergence and spontaneity.

I know that much of it will rattle your mind. But I hope that some of it
will be of value to you. I know that there is a unique spirit of learning
on this list. I hope that this spirit is powerful enough to allow you to
shift your paradigm.

Steve, you have excellently described a horrendous problem which ravages
all countries of the world more and more as they become part of the global
village. Our present educational practices cannot cope any more with the
complexity of the global village. They rely on a work ethic which is
destroyed by the very complexity of the global village. In order to have a
work ethic resilient enough to withstand the emergences of globalisation,
we need a paradigm shift so encompassing that it even affords the
emergence of such a resilient work ethic.

Strange as it may sound, our present impotent work ethic has much to do
with the confrontation between culture and nature as well as the abyss
between the material world of brain and the abstract world of mind. I will
try to show you why.

In a recent contribution of mine, I have mentioned that one of the things
which contributed to my own healing, is my roaming of the deserts - those
pristine places where culture have not yet intruded upon nature. I have
experienced that to survive in a desert like an animal, i.e without taking
the "products of culture" with me into the desert, I had to stop thinking
how to make nonspontaneous things happen and concentrate on becoming one
with the spontaneous activities of nature.

This helped me to discover that human culture has developed in such a
manner that presently its overall distinguishing feature is its design to
make nonspontaneous things happen. An automobile, a computer, a house, our
clothes, medicine and even much of our food will never come spontaneously
into existence. (Something happens spontaneously when it happens on its
own accord, i.e without being forced by an external source of work and
control.) In fact, we believe that our survival depends on our
nonspontaneous creations to combat nature. Think for example of
insecticides, genetically engineered clones, artificial climates, etc.

We will have to shift from a paradigm which favour nonspontaneous culture
to a paradigm which HARMONISE spontaneous AND nonspontaneous behaviour. We
will have to know when a nonspontaneous change is called for. But we will
also have to know when it is senseless and even contraproductive to
persist with enforcing nonspontaneous behaviour. For example, we try to
force nonspontaneous emergences with external work and control. We manage
to obtain some grotesque emergences, but even they, when the external work
and control stops, immediately immerge. (Apartheid in South Africa and
Communism in Eastern Europe are two examples.) The simple fact is that
resilient emergences happen only spontaneously.

We do not realise that we are rushing into a head-long crash with nature.
Nature develops spontaneously. Whenever anything changes spontaneously,
this change can be employed as a source of work. In other words, whereas a
nonspontaneous change needs work, a spontaneous change can supply work.
Thus, we employ nature as a source of work to try and survive against
nature with our nonspontaneous creations. We can fool our minds and those
of other humans, but we cannot fool nature. We cannot expect to butter our
bread on both sides and get away with it. Why?

Whenever something changes, entropy gets produced. Nothing will change
without the production of entropy. Whenever something happens
spontaneously, the entropy production is less than when it has to happen
nonspontaneously. In other words, whereas nature follows the course of
minimum entropy production, our culture try to follow a different course.

Many of us even follow the course of maximum entropy production. We not
only concentrate on making nonspontaneous things happen, but we rush them
to happen as fast as possible. We try to maximise our profits and think of
it as the pinnacle of success. But we are ignorant that by doing so, we
have to step up the rate of entropy production. Thus we are polluting
nature because she cannot handle this extra production any more. It is
this course of maximum entropy production which bring us in a head-long
crash with nature.

When entropy gets produced, it is first manifested as chaos. When this
chaos is increased to saturation, a bifurcation will happen. The
bifurcation will result into an emergence or an immergence. The emergence
will happen only if seven essentialities are sufficiently satisfied. If
not, the immergence will happen.

In our present culture we produce excessive entropy and thus chaos as is
its first manifestation. We are ignorant how excessive this entropy
production is and thus how many bifurcations we have already forced to
happen. Since we are also ignorant of the seven essentialities and thus
any deficiencies in them, we are ignorant of how many immergences
following these bifurcations had been due to our own making. Our climate
is getting out of control. Pests and diseases, unknown or rare a century
ago, are engulfing us. The fraction of poor and desitute is steadily
increasing. Crime is steadilky increasing. Uor weapons of destruction has
become abominable. Yet we maintain it all has nothing to do with us.

The first manifestation of entropy production as chaso of becoming stops
at the bifurcation. The second manifestation of entropy production as
order of being then ensues. Entropy gets locked up into organisation
through emergences into higher orders. We wish desperately for emergences,
but we deny our responsibility for them. We proudly claim that emergences
are mysterious gifts of the gods. Yet we try to sell the future as
expensive lucky packets with a blatant ripoff as the gift inside.

No wonder our learners do not want to learn spontaneously any more. No
wonder that what they have learrnt from us, do not enable them any more to
create their future. They cannot act as creative workers any more. In
order to still transfer information into their heads, trainers have to
force them by external work and control, employing all sorts of
educational devices

Unfortunately, trainers cannot force nonspontaneous emergent learning.
Thus the learners do not experience the happiness, curiosity and desires
which come with emergent learning. Eventually, once they have graduated,
employers have to keep up this nonspontaneous culture in order to still
get something done. We get surprised by their apathy towards what is good
(emergent) and their indulgence in what is bad (immergent) for them. We
even accuse them because they allowed their apathy and indulgences to
dictate their lives. This is all wrong. It is our own hubris which should
surprise us.- our ignorance which even defy the gods.

A new work ethic has to emergehich will be fit for the multitude of
immergences waiting upon us in the 21st century. This ethic will have to
connect chaos, order and complexity with work. Is such a connection
possible? Yes! I have already noted that when ANYTHING happens, entropy
has to be created. This entropy produced will be manifested, firstly and
automatically as chaos of becoming, then secondly and possibly as order of
being through a bifurcation. The seven essentialities are needed for the
bifurcation to finish as an emergence. This the law of entropy production
generates the astonishing variety in nature and culture.

But is it possible to formulate this law of entropy production with
its extraordinary concequences for chaos, order and complexity in
such a manner that it will also shed light on work? Yes. This law of
entropy production may be transformed into a formula in which work W
occur. The formula is /_\F - W < 0 where /_\ signifies a change and F
signifies the free energy of the system. For spontaneous changes
/_\F < 0 so that /_\F - W < 0 is true even with W = 0. This is why
spontaneous changes happen on their own accord. They may even be
harnessed as sources of work, i.e. W < 0. Thus /_\F - W < 0 will
still apply provided /_\F < W < . It means we should not try to get
more work from such a spontaneous change than what is available
through its free energy F.

For nonspontaneous changes /_\F > 0 so that W > 0, i.e work has to
be done by an external source on the system. Furthermore, not any
amount of work will do. In fact, 0 < /_\F < W which means that more
work has to be done than the change in free energy. If less work is
done in a spirit of mediocrity, nothing will happen so that the work
is only wasted in creating additional entropy.

Now what is this mysterious free energy F of a system? Any system has a
total energy E. The free energy F is that part of the total energy E of
the system which can be out-sourced as work. In other words, E - F is that
part of the energy E of the system which is necessary to maintain the
internal being and becoming (structures and processes) of the system. You
have probably all heard that entropy is chaos. It not as simple as that.
In fact, the entropy of a system is very closley related to this energy E
- F of the system needed to maintain its being and becoming. How is it
related? S = (E - F)/T where T is the absolute temperature. In other
words, the entropy of a system is directly responsible for its internal
organisation.

Now how did it ever happened that entropy was described as "a measure of
the unavailability of energy"? Very simple, in a culture which have to
drive nonspontaneous processes, we have to lay our hands on every bit of
energy to do it. In other words, we are not merely interested in the free
energy F, but also in the energy E - F needed to maintain the
being-becoming (internal organisation into an hierarchy of orders) of the
system.

Now, if we have a morality of TAKE rather than GIVE, we will have very
little respect for the being-becoming of a system. Thus we will think of E
- F as unavailable energy - energy which we will try to TAKE without any
respect for the internal organisation. To do this, we have to destroy some
of the being-becoming of the system to make more energy available. (For
example, we destroy forests - the lungs of the earth.) We can do this only
from top to bottom immergences. Thus we have to destroy the qualities of
the system, first that of the highest order, then the second highest
order, etc.

It should by now be clear that our greed for unavailable energy to force
our nonspontaneous creations to happen, is destroying the very fabrique of
our society. It is also bringing us into a ghastly conflict with nature.
In order to realise that not all energy is available to us, we have to
think of ourselves again as stewards. Unfortunately, we have allowed the
word "steward" to become as despising as its etymology indicates "warden
of the pig sty (ste)". However, our world has now become pretty much a pig
sty. Thus the time has come for us to manage this pig sty like wardens -
people who do not own, but who honour their caring - people who have a
mrality of GIVE rather than TAKE.

> We are continuing the dialogue with this group and plan to expand the list
> of participants. I can see a new vision of school-business partnership
> emerging within a systems framework which can have a significant impact on
> the structure of our educational system. I am very interested in hearing
> from anyone who has similar processes occurring in their communities or
> who see promise in this type of activity.

Steve, I hope you will notice how I have interweaved every issue which you
have raised in my contribution above. I could have answered your issues
one by one, but then this contribution would have trippled in length to
keep the explanantions coherent and contextual. I realise that I have
clobbered you and other readers who have managed this far with a
complexity of terms unfamiliar to you all. I realise that you by now you
will have much more questions than answers. Ask them and I will try to
answer them.

I think what you are doing in your school district in Illinois is vitally
important for humankind. You have raised many of the worrying issues in
our present educational practices. I wish you all success. However, by
wishing you all success I actually wish you and your community to
transform their consciousness - to emerge from the present civilisation
into a new one. This is very, very, very difficult to accomplish. If it is
done without unconditional love, the ordeal will be too much for the
majority to endure.

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/>