Ways to express it. LO22602

AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Thu, 9 Sep 1999 16:26:08 +0200

Dear Organlearners,

Greetings to you all.

I had such fun working through the last three LO digests
#2314, #2315, #2316. Here is why. (Take care)

~~~~~~
Rick Karash in LO22560

>I'm on Vacation in a nice part of the US. The golf is good
>and phone service should be great... but isn't.
>
>Therefore, I've not been able to distribute msgs from the list
>for the past few days, and LO is likely to be intermittant until
>the 10th.

Some reasons are better than none, even if they are intended for kids who
should not know the real reasons ;-)

Thanks for letting us know. We were beginning to worry!

~~~~~~
Doc Holloway in LO22561

>My favorite search meta-engine is metacrawler .....

Stop reading just there and make a picture in your mind ;-)

Thanks for the tip.

~~~~~~
Patrick Delaney in LO22562

>I'm much more interested in seeing Vision "X" reach practical
>application. Then the vision will live.

Seeing your "seeing Vision" made me seeing "the dog biting
its own tail" -- a living example ;-)

Your contribution is rich in the powerful cybernetic principle
"feedback" and how to apply it consistently to liven things up.

>How did they sell the first word processor?
By first creating it! Selling it came as an after thought. ;-)

~~~~~~
Patrick Fong in LO22563
>I am trying to find out the relationship between learning
>and knowledge transfer.

Do we not all want to know about this mystery? ;-)

Seriously, can we manage and transfer anything before
it has been created? If we do not create knowledge through
learning, then what do we create by learning? Where has
all the knowledge came from in the first place?

~~~~~~
David Lindbom in LO22568

>Also, just because there are correlations between personality
>types and different work behaviors and attitudes does not mean
>that there is a direct relationship.

It reminds me of the sun, moon and earth forming an eclipse.
This correlation seldom happens. Fortunately, these three
solar bodies are not directly in each others path ;-)

David, I appreciate your warning very much. The geneticist
CJ Li once gave a magnificent example of, superficially, a
near perfect correlation based on a thorough multivariate
regresssion analysis which actually took place. The use
of condoms correlated best with the use of electrical gadgets.
He then used Path Analysis to delve deeper than the mere
surface of things.

~~~~~~
Jeff Selzer in LO22569 to me:

>I agree with what you are saying here and would like
>to offer an additional wrinkle.

Fortunately, I do not worry about wrinkles and colourless
hair which comes with age ;-)

I appreciated the following very much
> ..it shows that their motivational make up does not alter
>greatly during their life time. What does alter is their
>expression of how they are motivated.

This "motivational make up" which you speak of, I call
the "first love" of that person. Here at our university many
students experience an identity crisis before they have
completed whatever the came for at the university. They
suddenly discover that the cauliflower (the specific degree
for which they study) is not worth the sauce (the way of
living). It is then when I have to guide them to recognise
their "first love" and make peace with it. Once they have
done that, their increase in motivation is truely remarkable

~~~~~~
Max Schupbach in LO22570

>I for one would like to hear more about what difference the
>vocabulary of ..... makes to the study of .....

Are we not all speaking in tongues? By working on the
"hard" things, the "soft" things comes to mind ;-)

Max, seriously, I am just as interested as you are. There is
an exciting parallel in the evolution of systems thinking and
chemistry thinking. When sufficient information comes to
light, the "soft" gets into the picture. Chemists though they
knew all about acid-base chemistry;- concentrated or diluted,
strong or weak, monoprotic or polyprotic, etc. etc. Then came
Ralph Pearson along with his principle HSAB (Hard and Soft
Acid and Bases), showing how much additional tidying of the
acid-base room is possible.

~~~~~~
Jan Lelie in LO22571

>...that is the problem with tests. It is like square wheels:
>they'll last longer when you do not use them.
>
>By the way, why are so many of these tests in magazines
>for women?

Since woman last longer, these tests are a conspiracy by
men (who are forever testing themselves) to get the upper
hand ;-)

Thank you, and also Scott Simmerman, for bringing humour
in the 16 element MBTI (which after all, is just another
square -- 4x4)

~~~~~~
Lon Badgett in LO22574

>The first time that I heard about my "personality", Some
>teachers in my high school said I was ENFP.
> "Assessments", they all told me, "will help in your career",
>Though how they were to do so wasn't ever very clear.

Someone overlooked you when giving the tests. You will
have to go back to the last one to get accepted ;-)

Thank you for a hillarious contribution. But underneath
all the laughter there are very serious reflections on
what we are doing -- you are true to the great (extinct)
tradition of court jesters.

~~~~~~
Tom Abeles in LO22575

>We need persons who have solid mastery of selected
>knowledge. But we also need philosophers ... (snip)

In what way do philosphers fail the test, the solid
or the mastery? ;-)

Your last sentence is sheer wisdom
>Disciplinarity, when in a reductionist mode can be
>just as destructive and banal as the promotion of
>interdisciplinarity to the sublime.
In reminds me of the interplay between content
(disicplines) and form (philsophy and systems
thinking).

This contribution is becoming too long now. So I will
end it with
~~~~~~
Winfried Dressler in LO22582

>I came to the conclusion that it is as difficult to get
>meaning out of the Eneagram as it is to get music out
>of a violin.

Were that not the words of Nero when Rome was burning? ;-)

Thank you for your powerful metaphor with

>A master of violin learns to master his personality through
>mastering the violin. It is the opposite of a quick fix.

The violin player (as an example of "art expressing")
made me think of all five elementary sustainers of creativity.
It is incredible how much anyone of them by reflection helps
a person to recognise his/her own personality. In only one
of them does putting-into-the-box play a vital role, namely
"game playing". We must be thankful for that.
~~~~~~

Have all you fellow learners noticed how vividly these
contributors (some not even with English as mother
tongue) used the English language?

It reminds me of the people of that dessert region in
South Africa called Namaqualand. These people do not
tell and laugh at jokes to become creative. They think
that jokes are foolish and derogative. They rather use
their language (Afrikaans) very creatively to tell stories
about real incidents in life where their creativity (or lack
of it) made the incident outstanding. I have tried in this
contribution to give you a feignt idea of how it happens.

It is a pity that I cannot do it in Afrikaans because in
this (youngest of all) language you can create freely
words on deep patterns -- even though few speakers
outside Namaqualand make use of this power.

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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