Dear Organlearners,
Don Dwiggens < d.l.dwiggins@computer.org > writes:
>>In my language we have a saying -- if you want to kill a
>>dog, you will > always find a stick to do it. Another way
>>to say it is that we are slowly > engulfed by a culture of
>>hurt. This culture will eventually destroy our capacity to
>>self-organise irreversibly.
>
>Is it possible to do that to a complex system without killing
>it outright? I think of the resilience of life (such as the quick
>recolonization of the slopes of Mt. St. Helens after its explosive
>eruption) and mind (such as the ability of Helen Keller to build
>a rich life on the basis of the few modes of perception left to
>her). Based on that, I suspect that the worst we can do is to
>create a period of badly reduced diversity and richness.
Greetings Dwig,
You are right. There is always a remnant of some life forms after the
collapse of diversity (because of some catastrophe) to go on with the task
of creating diversity again.
But I think we have to distinguish between local and global cacastrophes.
Your two beautiful examples of Mt St Helens and Helen Keller are local
catastrophies. Thus both could depend on the rest of the unaffected global
environment to aid them in the recovery. The extinction of the dinosaurs
was a global cacastrophy.
What worries me about the culture of hurt is that it is affecting more and
more humankind as a whole. I am a human and not merely a mammal because I
belong to humankind. I hope desperately it is the same for other persons.
In other words, a major part of the environment of any person is the other
humans with whom such a person lives. (We observe the same kind of thing
among certain other mammals like elephants and dolphins -- it extremely
diffcult for such an animal to live isolated from other specimens of the
same species.) When humankind is making it increasingly difficult for any
person to live humanely, we destroy increasingly our capacity for
humaneness.
When two different civilisations (with very different cultures each)
engage each other, we have a global rather than a local situation. Thus
it frequently happens that the one civilisation is completely eradicated
without even a remnant to take it further.
South Africa is presently one of the most interesting "ready made
laboratories" in the whole world. Here one can observe (as I have observed
in three major corporations, two of them only shadows of their former
status) how the culture of hurt brings an organisation to its knees,
loosing its capacity to self-organise irreversibly. Obviously, the fan
for blowing up this culture of heart, was the ideology of apartheid.
>Of course, that could certainly be terrible, but I believe a new
>realm of emergences would almost certainly result.
>(Interesting; this seems to tie in well with my previous
>message on diversity.)
Yes Dwig, the immergences of whole civilisations (and every person
making them up) are indded terrible.
Yes, it fits with your previous message.
Interestingly, this is also one of the main themes of the Bible. In the
Old Testament it concerned particular civilisations like the Egyptians,
the Babilonians, etc. The worst thing for the prophet Jeremiah to do, was
to tell the Hebrew civilisation that the same thing will also happen to it
-- but fortunately, with a small remnant to sustain the birth of the
Messiah. This theme broadens in the New Testament, going from the local to
the global. But this paragraph concerns religion and you have experienced
how people throw caution into the wind when it concerns religious matters.
So I will stop this line of thought for the well being of our LO list.
I think that it is very important for the subject "irreversible
self-organisation" to know what makes the difference at the bifurcation
point between a destructive immergence and a constructive emergence.
Unfortunately, if the whole subject of irreversible self-organisation
concerns a paradigm shift, then again we have much the same behaviour as
religious controversies. I have not only studied Kuhn's theory
extensively, but have also worked through all the historical information
he refers to in so far as it is available here in South Africa. Kuhn's
theory is heavily criticised. But much of it fits into my own Systems
Thinking (or Mental Model as some prefer to claim) based on "entropy
production".
Dwig, have you ever wondered about the following?
The sad thing about a good theory is that you cannot undo it when it also
predicts bad things.
This part of what I call the "Prophet's dilemma".
Dwig, I like the quotation in your sig very much
> "Here's a thought that should help you fight on a little longer:
> What doesn't actually kill you usually makes you stronger."
> -- Piet Hein
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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