If it is cold and wet where you live, take a trip with the mind to a
place where it is hot (above 45C) and dry (lower than 1%). Go to:
< http://www.thresholds.com/articles/skelmpie.htm >
(Thank you very much Doc Holloway for making your site available for a
picture and a short article on one of my desert companions. I have written
a number of times on this list on my desert companions, but one picture is
more worth than ten thousand words.)
Discover a life form which will never make it at your place, unless
you provide artificially the correct environment for it (called an
aridarium). Now for the opposite. Try to picture in your mind how you
will be living there. You will probably think that you will never make
it living there, unless you provide yourself with an artificially
altered environment (called a home).
But it is possible to make a living there without an artificial home.
The San people (Bushmen) have been doing it for millenia! They have
mastered the art of harmonising with the environment. However, then
you will have to change your mind (mental models and system thinking)
completely. This is an example of a paradigm shift. Sadly, we humans
have so little experience in paradigm shifts. Thus we try to avoid
them.
The San people are no exception.They now have to live in our world,
rich in technology and information. But they want to belong to their
old world so that they cannot made the paradigm shift. Thus they are
continually immerging -- failing our way of living. Only a couple of
thousand still exist. Only a few hundred can still speak their native
language. This language has more than 150 distinct phonemes, making it
phonemically the richest language in the world!
The planet earth is our real home -- not our artificially built
skyscrapers and our polluting industries. We will have to harmonise
these artificial creations with our real home. We cannot expect our
real home to alter its own course of irreversible self-organisation.
We can only CHANGE our OWN course of irreversible self-organisation.
But this requires that we will have to master the art of irreversible
self-organisation. We need not follow the course of the San, but we
need at least to shift our paradigm. That will not happen unless we
desire it to happen.
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>