What is love? LO22886

Artur F. Silva (artsilva@individual.EUnet.pt)
Thu, 14 Oct 1999 22:39:28 +0000

Replying to LO22867

At 09:53 13-10-1999 -0400, Rick wrote:

>I like the definition by Humberto Maturana for thinking about love in
>communities and in the workplace.
>
>Maturana defines:
>
>Love is the domain of relational behaviours through which another (a
>person, being, or thing) arises as a legitimate other in coexistence
>with oneself.

(...)

>Now, Maturana goes on to say that Love is the ONLY domain of
>relational behaviours that expands intelligent behaviour.
>
>That is... Love... creates learning. Hmm...
>
>This IS the learning-org dialogue...

(...)

>p.s. How about "Romantic Love"? There's some overlap. The other
>"arising as a legitimate other in coexistence" is certainly part of
>Romantic Love, but the above is not adequate to explain romantic
>love. In my view. But, this is the LEARNING-ORG dialogue, so romantic
>love would be off-topic.

I don't think it is completely off-topic. At least as a matter of
reflection. Please follow-me:

Francesco Alberoni wrote a book called (in Italian) "Innamoramento e
amore" (sorry; I don't now the English translation - "Amore" means love;
"Innamoramento" is a bit more than "to fall in love"). He defines
innamoramento as "the processes of creating a social collective of two".
And he maintains that this process is the main process for change and
learning. Why? because when we talk to "other" we can not to pay attention
to anything we disagree with. During Innamoramento we can't; if we do so
the all process of Inamoramento disappears. So (true) dialogue begins.
Imagine what is the word he uses for this? Yes, MATANOIA.

In "Genesi", considering the birth and development of social transforming
movements he uses the some term but now to designate the creation of a
group "passionate by a cause", and loving each other (the primitive
Christians, the Enlightenment period, etc).

So he attributes to Metanoia:

- the capacity to accept the other as someone that has a potentially
valid contribution to make;
- the basis for the dialogue process to begin;
- the "human energiser" that allows for profound change and learning
(better the driver for the "unlearning process" that must precede true
learning".

Do you understand now why I think that understanding the metanoia in a LO
is so crucial?

Best Regards

Artur

"Artur F. Silva" <artsilva@individual.eunet.pt>

-- 

"Artur F. Silva" <artsilva@individual.eunet.pt>

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