Creativity in the LO LO16807

Simon Buckingham (go57@dial.pipex.com)
Mon, 02 Feb 1998 16:25:00 -0800

Replying to LO16749 --

Mnr AM de Lange wrote:

> Simon, your statement "The fact is that too few people share too much
> wealth." has caught my attention. Allow me to reformulate it as the
> proposition "Too few people share too much wealth". Whereas a statement
> concerns a fact, a proposition is a sentence which can either have the
> value true (a fact) or the value false (a farse), but not both.
>
>Is it material wealth, or spiritual
> wealth or both?

I had material wealth in mind- given Srinath's focus on conspicuous
consumption. Spiritual wealth for me is more valauble than material
wealth- so many of my friends pursue sports cars usually via debt- symbols
of independence end up making people dependent upon income sources such as
salaries!

> What is this peculiar thing? Let us go back to Simon's proposed solution.
>
> If we analize "We need to move to technological capitalism in which
> everyone can participate and markets are contestable by anyone with
> a good innovative solution." very carefully, the solution contains
> three facets:
> technological capitalism,
> competitive markets,
> innovative solutions.
> For me "technological capitalism" means capitalism which is driven by
> technology. What is capitalism? What is technology?
>
> Philip Coggin (1979, Pergamon) wrote the book "Education for the future:
> the case for radical change" which seems to have caught little attention.
> Coggin was involved with technology and education at various levels for
> most of his life. He became more and more aware of one burning problem:
> why is it so difficult to get people educated in technology at large? He
> then magnificantly argue that CREATIVITY is the basic prerequisite for
> education in technology to become successful. The radical change he
> champions for is that eduction has to become creativity orientated,
> something which has not yet happened.
>
> We are now in a position to see that in the three facets to Simon's
> solution, creativity is the common factor. Furthermore, it is the
> heightened awareness of humankind to creativity which is responsible for
> the fact that humankind now finds the practice "let fewer rich people get
> richer and more poor people get poorer" a criminal activity. Thus it is
> this very "heightened awareness of humankind to creativity" which we must
> use to transform reality such that the proposition "Too few people share
> too much wealth" will become false.

Yes, creativity is the key- I do not advocate education per se in fact I
think that education systems are currently of dubious value- they are
suboptimal learning mechanisms. Creativity is the key- and comes from
whereever from whoever. There are some very stupid professors in this
world- and I am not thinking of you At!

> What drives me up the walls, is the proposed transformation"take from the
> few rich and redistribute it among the many poor". It is, from a creative
> point of view, foolish.

Yes- I advoacte equality of opportunity- let ANYONE who can create be able
to benefit from their creation- irrespective of who they know, how many
qualifications they have and so on. Under technological capitalism,
everyone can access the land, but not everyone has the same sized piece of
land. Those who create more of more value, earn more.

regards simon http://www.unorg.com

-- 

Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>

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