Turn of the Year LO20239

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Mon, 21 Dec 1998 15:47:16 +0200

Dear Organlearners,

Please skip this contribution if any specific faith will offend you.

The end of this year draws closer. Soon it will be Christmas and then
New-year's day. Another cycle in the calender will be completed.

Ordinate bifurcations at the edge of chaos are important to us. They can
lead to either constructive emergences or destructive immergences. We can
get to the edge of chaos either through our own inner entropy production
or by becoming inundated with entropy produced form the outside. When we
want to produce our own entropy to reach the edge of chaos, cycles (feed
back loops) are the best way to do so. If the cycle result in an
immergence or appear to do so, we just repeat the cycle, trying again for
the emergence.

Thus we built up far more experential and tacit knowledge in the above
phenomenon than what we would be willing to admit. However, we
inadvertedly articulate much of this experential and tacit knowledge by
our activities at the turn of the year. For example, we wish each other
peace, prosperity and happiness at the turn of the year. What we seldom
seem to realise is that peace, prosperity and happiness cannot come about
without bifurcations. Yet we can have either peace, prosperity and
happiness as a constructive emergence, or war, poverty and misery as the
destructive immergence. Bith cannot but suggest bifucrations.

According to the information in the New Testament, Jesus had been born in
the summer months (northern hemisphere) because the shepherds were out in
the open veld at night. In other words, June would be much more probable
the month of birth than December. Yet, since the Early Middle Ages, His
date of birth was regulated to fall in December. The reason was to replace
some pagent practises involving fertility rituals -- another way of
articulating what happens at the edge of chaos! Unfortunately, the
birthday of Jesus Christ, now known as Christmas, has very much become
paganised itself. Like Bernard Shaw, this makes me quite cynical.

But I often wonder what will become of Christmas should Christians decide
to celeberate it in the middle of the year. Thinking of Mother's day and
Father's day, I am certain that it will still be exploited economically to
its limit. But I also wonder what will happen at the end of the year
should Christmas not be available then. Will people stop wishing each
other peace, prosperity and happiness at the turn of the year? I do not
think so. They will find a way to articulate their tacit knowledge at the
turn of the year.

Another though experiment "what if" is the following. What will happen if
all of humankind drop six months of the calender. In other words, we begin
next year with July rather than January. The turn of the year and the
millenium will then be six months later. Christmas will then be six months
later in June. Will people wish each other peace, prosperity and happiness
at the height of summer (northern hemisphere) when the year turns, or in
the winter months in the middle of the year? Yes, they will do it at the
height of summer because it is then the turn of the year. Why? (Stop the
the "what if").

People certainly do not wish each other peace, prosperity and happiness in
the middle of any traditional year in such a grand fashion as at the end
of the year. But it does not mean that they do not do it at all. They will
only do it at other times than the turn of the year when someone specific
has been caught up on a bad stretch of conflict, loss or pain. Thus they
do recognise the bifurcative nature of these things.

However, what most people recognise far less, are those things which
promote the emergence into peace, prosperity and happiness while avoiding
the immergences into war, poverty and misery. I think there is a reson for
it. Emergences into peace, prosperity and happiness are a major facet of
irreversible self-organisation. Thus we become through such emergences
narcistic, seeking our self-interests. However, the things which promote
emergences, are very difficult, if not impossible to discover through
self-reflection. In other words, we cannot discover them in ourselves as
"subject". We have to incorporate others as "objects" (and not subjects)
in our observations and thinking. These "others" should not only be other
people, but at least all other forms of live.

One such a thing which promotes emergences, is wholeness. Wholeness for me
as a human means that I am only part of me. The other part of me is
everyone of you fellow learners, whether we can act together or cannot
stand each other. By letting fragmentarism (apartheid) creeping in between
us, we destroy the other part of us. In doing so, we cannot emerge to
peace, prosperity and happiness. Even worse, we will reap the outcomes of
immergences, namely war, poverty and misery. The majority of white people
in South Africa has learnt this lesson.

Unfortunately, far too few South Africans have learnt the co-lesson that
when someone else experiences war, poverty and misery, you cannot have
sustainable peace, prosperity and happiness yourself. South Africa is now
slowly developing a "neo-apartheid" based on a black majority whereas the
old apartheid was based on a white minority. Whereas the "group areas"
act which restricted the free movement of citizins (read blacks) was an
important tool in maintaining "apartheid", the "affirmative action" act
which now regulates the racial composition of any organisation to reflect
that of the country as a whole (read 70% must be black), is fast becoming
the most important tool in "neo-apartheid". White people loose their jobs
by the tens of thousands because of the colour of their skin, just to be
replaced by people of the correct colour irrespective of their competency.
This happens because of the communist ideology that a massive
redistribution of wealth is possible without any sustaining change in the
productivity of the receivers. Thabo Mbeki will take over from Nelson
Mandela after the elections in the first half of next year. Unlike
Mandela, it seems that he does not have the charismatic stature to keep
the communists at bay.

So far about different people inside one country such as South Africa.
But what about peace, prosperity and happiness among different nations
from different countries. Can a country like the USA, a super world power,
sustain the emergences to its own internal peace, prosperity and
happiness? The answer is no. Let us look again at South Africa. It was
more powerful than all the other countries of Southern Africa put
together. In other words, South Africa was a regional super power. Yet it
could not sustain the ideology of "apartheid". The simple reason is that
it lacked the moral ground to do so. The ideology apartheid was the
serious moral problem for which no solution was possible, other than to
scrap the ideology all together. The USA may also have an ideology causing
a serious moral problem for which no solution is possible other than than
scrapping that ideology all together. Whatever this ideology is, it will
definitely cause terrorism, poverty and misery as in the case of
apartheid. I pray that people of the USA will soon become sufficiently
perceptive of such an ideology should one be actually operating.

What about the turn of the year -- should I wish you all peace, prosperity
and happiness as if it is something depending on blind luck. No -- not for
the blind luck. But I do wish you with ALL MY HEART an era of peace,
prosperity and happiness. However, I know with ALL MY MIND that we will
all have to work for it by creating, learning and believing. Like Jan
Smuts I believe that we must stop fooling ourselves with our own insanity
that war, poverty and misery is not our making. It is the easiest thing in
the world to judge the other parties as guilty so as to free ourselves of
our own guilt. Unfortunately, this judgement does two things. It blocks
our minds to understand how to promote the bifurcations into emergences
rather than immergences. It also hardens our hearts to feel how our sins
draw us futher away from salvation.

This brings me to Christmas, the celebration of the birth day of Jesus.
The Hebrew word for saviour is Joshua -- jesu being its Grecian form. The
Greek word for saviour is christos. Thus Jesus Christ means Saviour
Saviour. Whatever people have to say about Him, his own words were that he
did not came to judge, but to save people because of God's Love,
incomprehensible as it may appear to us. Save people from what? From
eternal death, he said. Along the path to eternal death we will find
immergences like war, poverty and misery. For this salvation He had to die
on the cross so as to be resurrected on the third day. By saving people,
He helps them through the Holy Spirit to follow the path leading to
eternal live. Along the path to eternal live we will find emergences like
peace, prosperity and happiness, BUT NEVER in such a manner as to serve
our self-interest. Ask Job to explain it to you.

Peace, prosperity and happiness have to serve our mutual interests, i.e
all the parties involved. The real understanding of peace, prosperity and
happiness is that with it we have to serve others, not ourselves.
Emergences are never self serving (i.e symmetrical and reflexsive) but
always asymmetrical and transitive. We have no better example in the
entire history of humankind than Jesus Christ himself. To let us share in
peace, prosperity and happiness, He had to follow the path on which those
in power denied Him such peace, prosperity and happiness. He could have
easily retaliated with war, poverty and misery, but never did so through
all His life. But He showed us how to answer such deeds with unconditional
love.

It may seem strange to you, but the art (theory and practise) of a
Learning Organisation can be summarised as follows: for every deed of
hurt, reply to it with a deed of love. By doing so we will experience
emergences to peace, prosperity and happiness. My wish to all of you is to
be able to participate in this art, not as a tokenism for the few days at
the turn of the year, but for all the days of the rest of your lives.

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

Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>