Dear Organlearners,
John Zavacki <jzavacki@greenapple.com> writes:
>Sprituality is another subject that should not become an object.....
Greetings John,
You sentence had me thinking deeply. I hope that by denying the subject to
become the object, you are not also denying the role of the object ("throw
the baby out with the bath water"). The object plays a very important role
for me. I will explain why.
I write the following in the light of our other discussion topic "What is
culture?".
Let me illustrate schematically how I distinguish between object and
subject:
[object]--->---[thinking]--->---[subject]
A diversity of subjects and a diversity in each emerge
when we make the feedback loop:
--[object]-->--[thinking]-->--[subject]--
| |
---------------<--[thinking]--<----------------
(I hope this feedback loop will come out nicely on your screen. Try
using a propotional font.) [Host: I think At means "fixed width" font.]
If I understand you correctly, you warn against cutting out
the object and thus reducing the feedback loop into:
--[object]-->--[thinking]-->--[subject]--
| |
------------------<----------------
When doing this in the loop the output "subject" of thinking
becomes the input (and thus "object") of thinking. However,
you may also warn at bringing the object into the picture at
all. If this is the case, how do you set up a feedback loop to
generate diversity?
This fragmentation of reality as the principal object leads to a denial of
the essentiality openness. It is the beginning of narcism, an inbreeding
of thoughts. The mind feeds upon itself (look at the last diagram to see
how it happens). It diminishes diversity and leads eventually to
stagnation. It is deadly to spirituality. (I understand spirituality as a
healthy life in the world of mind, a healthy way of thinking.)
The feedback loop may become so complex that we cannot even perceive
that we have cut away the object. However, the result is just as
deadly to spirituality because the loop is still the same reduced one,
despite all its complexity. This is a serious problem for all cultural
sciences (humanities) on the one hand as well as the natural sciences
on the other hand. I will now abbreviate
thinking to T
object to O
subject to S
The reduced loop for the humanities looks as follows:
--[O]-->--[T]-->--[culture]-->--[T]-->--[S]--
| |
-------[T]------<--------<---------
For all natural sciences it looks like:
--[O]-->--[T]-->--[nature]-->--[T]-->--[S]--
| |
-------[T]------<--------<--------
It both cases it leads to an unhealthy spirituality. In the case of
the humanities it leads to what I would call a "narcistic humanism"
(spiritualism?). In the case of the natural sciences it leads to
"narcistic naturalism" (anthropocentrism?).
The way in which I see to heal our spirituality, is to acknowledge at
least BOTH the "object" and "thinking" TOGETHER as the primary dual
[object]-->--[thinking] or for short [O]-->--[T]
We can name it with "principal object diversifier". We also know it by
the name "systems thinking", but I wonder how many of us have insight
in this function of "system(s) thinking"? In all other cases I am
quite happy working with the plural s in "systems thinking", but here
I would rather use the singular "system thinking".
(By the way, in mathematical Category Theory such "being-becoming" in
a closed diagram is known as a "subobject classifier").
Note that [O]-->--[T] consists of a "being" (object) and a "becoming"
(thinking). All feedback loops should then contain this [O]-->--[T].
In the case of the nature+culture dual, the complex loop will look as
follows:
---------<----------<------[T]------<--------<-------<--
| |
| /-->--[nature]-->--[T]-->--[S]-->--
--[O]-->--[T]--
| \-->--[culture]-->--[T]-->--[S]-->--
| |
---------<----------<------[T]-------<--------<-------<--
Please note in the above loop the part:
/-->--
--[O]-->--[T]--
\-->--
It shows that diversification by way of bifurcations is essential to
thinking. In other words, forking events are essential to thinking.
Also compare the above loop to the two former ones leading to an
unhealthy sprituality in the humanities and natural sciences. The two
former loops have cut out the dual [O]-->--[T], ie. "systems
thinking".
I have written that in order to heal our spirituality, we have to
acknowledge at least the dual [O]-->--[T]. The "at least" means that
it is not enough. By requiring all feedback loops to connect to the
[O], we made some pretty strong assumptions with far reaching
consequences. These consequences can promote or impair our
spirituality. Thus we will have to uncover these assumptions and
determine whether each one promote or impair spirituality.
Here is one such an assumption: "all loops connect to one" [O]. In
other words, we have assumed "wholeness" in [O]. By letting one or
more loops not connecting with [O], we have cut out [O] from these
loops, hence fragmenting [O] into parts unneccessary for connection
and consequently denying "wholeness".
How does "wholeness" influence spirituality?
Are there more assumptions than merely "wholeness"?
Are they ("wholeness" one of them) merely assumptions,
or are they also something else?
Best wishes
[Host's Note: At, thanks for going through the effort to create these
diagrams in a text msg. This shows how much we need to be able to include
graphics in our conversation here. ...Rick]
--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
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>