Chinese 5 elements and LO LO19562

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Tue, 20 Oct 1998 14:26:23 +0200

Replying to LO19445 --

Dear Organlearners,

Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@voith.de> send me a copy of his
contibution since in my abscence I have lost all. I wish to reply to it as
follows:

He wrote:

>I could connect At's five manifestations with the Chinese
>teaching of the 5 elements. I am sure that this connection
>is very fruitful in the case of LO, so let me explain:
(snip)

>If you have drawn this picture, try the following correspondence:
>wood - art expressing
>fire - game-playing
>soil - dialogue
>metal - problem-solving
>water - exemplar-studying

If I have to find a correspondence between these two sets, your fitting is
very apt. But what about another fitting such as

wood - exemplar-studying
fire - problem-solving
soil - dialogue
metal - game-playing
water - art expressing

I can certainly think of people for whom this correspondence will also
make sense, although they might not fit into the Chinese teaching of
healing.

Let me summarise the five "elementary sustainers of creativity".
Elementary
People of all ages can participate in them intuitively
-- very little formal training is needed.
Sustainers
When people participate in them, they want more
-- they cannot tear them loose from such an activity.
These five "sustainers" are very important because we will have to
begin with experiencing them to create more sophisticated experiences.

I can form an idea how the five Chinese elements also operate elementary
and sustainable. But I find it difficult to form an UNIQUE one-to-one
pairing the two sets. In fact, when I replace the five element Chinese set
by the four element Greek set (soil, fire, water and air), such a
correspondence is not possible anymore.

But please do not think that I consider these 5 Chinese elements (or
similarly the 4 Greek elements) unimportant. They show us how people
thought millenia ago. Their thoughts are the "roots" of our own thoughts
(the "trees"). We cannot know the tree by only its trunk and foilage and
not its roots. The roots anchor the tree and supply it with all its trace,
micro and most of its macro (except carbon) nutrients. For example,
[foilage] our concept of entropy today is related to the [trunk] concept
of phlogiston a couple of centuries ago which itself is related to the
[roots] concept of fire a couple of millenia ago.

>At, you explicitely wrote "I have identified five of them
>up to now". This "up to now" shows me, that you are not
>sure whether there are more. The above pattern indicate,
>that "5" is as complete in this case as "7" in the case
>of the essentialities.

In the case of the seven essentialities, I have commented before that it
is possible to divide them into more than seven ( but less complex)
essentials or group them into less than seven (but more complex)
essentials. I have done it myself on the formal level of my knowledge.
But on the sapient level of my lnowledge, I think it is not wise to do so.
For example, they have been discovered (seven of them) by comparing two
seeming disjunct creative subjects -- the chemical system of the material
world and the mathematical system of the abstract world. Should we divide
them into more than seven or group them into less than seven essentials,
trying to repeat the original discovery of them becomes very skewed.

Maybe you are right about the 5 sustainers, but I am not sure. Up to last
year I had identified only four of them. Late last year, while observing
my granddaughter Jessica and the other kids at the nursery school busy
with spontaneous activities, I noticed not only four of these activities,
but also the fifth one "art expressing". I felt rather foolish for not
having been aware of it much earlier.

In my recent tour to five countries in Southern Africa, I wanted to
observe as closely as possible the development of the creativity of the
ordinary people in these countries. Among other things, I kept my eyes
open for these 5 "sustainers" operating. They were definitely operating,
although not as frequent and rich as in other parts of the world. (Thus
there is still much hope for these people.) I saw some wonderful examples.
For example, bicycles are by far the major mode of mechanical
transportation. But bycicles (steel frames, rubber tyres, etc.) are
expensive for these people - probably more expensive than a motor car
would be to you. A few young innovators solved their problem by
constructing bicycles from wood, frames as well as wheels (solid discs)!

>I don't know much about the primary dualty Yin-Yang,
>but may be it corresond to At's distinction "the world inside"
>and "the world outside". Then, in case of dialogue, the
>two types could be "listening" and "talking". But it also
>could be "dialogue" and "discussion/debate/dispute"
>(here I am just guessing).

It is becoming by the day more important for me to explain to all you
people how entropy gets produced. I will try to explain it in such a
manner that hopefully even people with no backgound in hard core natural
science will be able to understand it. But the following reply to your
remarks cannot be in that manner. Thus please excuse the sophistication.

Entropy is produced by force-flux pairs. Both the force (tension) and flux
(flow) of any pair must exist before that pair can produce entropy. The
force comes into existence when there are two different values of the same
emergent (intensive property, quality), i.e where there is a Yin-Yang. The
"world inside me" and the "world outside me" is one of most complex
entropic forces (Yin-Yangs) in any person's life. Since it has both a
physical and a spiritual dimension to it, it is a rather complex entropic
force. But it cannot produce entropy unless there is also an entropic
flux. In this case the corresponding flux is all the creations (physical
and spiritual) entering or leaving the person.

A Bohmian dialogue acts like a flux. But when it becomes a debate with
deeming or judging, it becomes a force-flux pair. Since a dialogue acts as
a flux, every participant can use it with their "World Yin Yang" ("world
inside" differing from "world outside") as a powerful entropy producing
pair. For example, I use Bohmian dialogues on this LO forum (where they
occur more than on any other listserver or news group known to me) quite
often by connecting them to my own "World Yin Yang". Please note that I
describe the "World Yin Yang" as "world inside" DIFFERING FROM "world
outside" and not as "world inside" VERSUS "world outside".

Unfortunately, since a debate acts as a force-flux pair and not a pure
flux, it cannot be coupled to the "World Yin Yang" to produce entropy
internally. Thus self-organisation is not possible. Yet a debate has a
very important function which much be used wisely. Because it is already
entropy producing, it can lead to bifurcations (emergences or
immergences). Its immergences are the falsification of any unfound
pretences. But if one of more of the seven essentialities are also
subjected to the debate, emergences will not happen because of the
impairing of the essentialities. Unfortunately, this is what usually
happens in most debates.

The fact that when the seven essentialities themselves are subjected to
any debate (scientific, economic, parliamentary, etc.) it will cause only
their immergences and not their emergences, makes them most peculiar in
any epistemology. After my insight in this peculiarity emerged, many
things became clear to me. For example, in my country's own 20th centiuy
history we have two prime ministers, genl JBM Herzog (the father of
Afrikanership) and genl Jan Smuts (the father of wholism). In other words,
although they knew nothing about my seven essentialies, I can say with
confidence after having studied their works extensively, that Herzog was
keen on the essentiality sureness ("identitiy-categoricity") while Smuts
was keen on the essentiality wholeness ("associativity-monadicity").
Unfortunately, it was parliamentary debate which kept these two men apart
for most of their lives.

>If this pattern can assist you in creating one or another
>"Aha!" I would be more than glad, when you share this
>with us here on the list.

In my case it did evolve into an "aha" - creating the name "World
Yin-Yang" for a very important entropic force in my own life.

One last point, I have noticed that in my new email program (MS Outlook
Express) my "name" has been typed in as "A M de Lange" rather than as "Mnr
A M de Lange". In other words, the title "Mnr" which means "mister" has
been dropped. I will now leave it as irreversible change rather than
reversing it back, creating even more confusion in the LO Archives. I am
sorry for the irreversible change, but I did not check the "name" before I
made use of the new program a couple of times.

Best wishes

-- 

At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa

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