Unlearning LO24294

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 04/03/00


Replying to LO24280 --

Dear Organlearners,

Nick Heap <nickheap@tesco.net> writes

>The problem with thinking about "Unlearning" is there are
>two quite distinct types of learning.
>
>If you learn a new skill, such as how to make bread, you
>have it available and can use it or modify what you do.
(snip)
>I think this "dropping" would be "unlearning" something perhaps
>and might be easy. I can't think of a good name for this sort of
>learning so I'll call it "Type 1" for convenience.
>
>However, you might have a painful experience and "learn"
>something as a result.
(snip)
>Much of what happens in organisations and keeps them rigid
>and prevents real "Type 1" learning are the effects of the painful
>experiences of the organisations members that have never
>been fully released.
(snip)
>Does this ring any bells out there?

Greetings Nick,

Yes, the bells ring ("beier" in Afrikaans, "klingen" in German) clear.
Your "Type 1" is what I call "constructive" learning". It makes the
evolution (emergence and growth) of higher spiritual orders possible. That
is is why I call constructive learning also authetic learning. Your "other
type" is what I call "destructive learning". It (to use your words) "keeps
them rigid" so that people cannot have further spiritual evolution.

The same thing happens in creativity. When creativity is "constructive",
then it can sustain the evolution of learning which is of higher order.
But when creativity is "destructive", then it keeps people rigid so that
they cannot learn.

What we need to know, is what thing(s) make(s) learning (or even creating
as lower order or believing higher order) either constructive or
destructive. You called them "painful" experiences. But what makes the
experiences painful?

Here is an example. I do not want to load a certain "suite" on my computer
because as soon as I do that, I open myself up to a massive crash with it.
So I have to use a email program which does not have features such as
"spell checker" or "auto save". I force myself to save manually (using
three clicks for each save) my email work.

I do it after every paragraph such as I have done just now. Sometimes I
get so passionate that I forget to save. It is then when I become most
vulnerable. Some technician in the university or municipality may cut off
the mains without any warning. The wholeness between the power station as
a source of electrical "free energy" and my PC gets broken. It ceases to
function and I lose all my work since the last save. The more passionate
my work, the less I remember to save and thus the more will be lost.
Passion also cannot be regenerated to the same level on demand by
repeating an original creation. Thus the losing of wholeness is a painful
spiritual experience for me, even if it is merely the phsyical breaking of
the electrical circuit in the mains supply.

But since I know how important wholeness is to me, I save after every
paragraph as I have just now done again. Thus I can keep on learning and
helping other to learn. I will be slightly annoyed when the power would
now fail, but it is merely for the couple of sentences in this paragraph
lost and the time lost to reboot my computer and get a copy of my last
save. It means that for the next five minutes or so I cannot proceed as I
intended. In other words, my intended evolution will become rigid for a
couple of minutes. Should the mains supply fail exactly when the head of
the hard disc is moving when writing on it, I might lose more and thus
become rigid for a longer period rigid.

We take wholeness too much for granted. Shortly after I have
discovered the essentialities of creativity (and thus its higher
order emergents) a massive hole appeared in a road close to
Pretoria. A person crashed with his car into it, but escaped
death miraculously. In an interview this person said:
        Suddenly the road was not whole ("heel") anymore
        because there was a hole ("gat") in the road. But for
        the holy ("heilige") Lord my time was not yet up.
It was for me as if that person kept on living just to tell me not
to forget how important wholeness is.

We have to emerge into awareness that wholeness is essential for creating,
learning, believing and loving. We must also grow in this awareness of
wholeness. Thus, whereas Jan Smuts stressed wholeness is the force of
evolution, I also have to stress our evolution in wholeness and the other
six essentialities. An evolving wholeness is an authentic wholeness.
However, some people think that the opposite is also possible, that
wholeness can be broken without serious consequences for learning. This
thinking of wholeness is not authentic of wholeness.

If unlearning implies that we can do without wholeness, then this
unlearning cannot be constructive. Removing a painful experience which
bars any further learning and then not paying further attention to the
removed "painful experience" is not wholesome. That "painful experience"
will just wander around in the mind until it connects with another shadowy
experience so as to become a barrier to learning again. Unless someone can
prove to me that experiences are reversible so that they can pop out as
easily as they have become part of us. It can sometimes take many decades
for that hurting experience to connect at the right place so that healing
and hence peace can come.

In my own life I know of one as a 5 year old kid which took almost thirty
years to heal and several close to twenty years before they healed. I even
tried telling myself that I understood those longevity experiences wrongly
and that I rather should have interpreted them otherwise. The trouble was
that those who were responsible for these experiences, were very, very
clear in their intention. Telling myself that their intentions were
different and thus that I can forget these hurting experiences was merely
me trying to lie to myself. It did not help.

What helped in each case were three things. (1) I had to incorporate each
such a hurting experiences into a constructive task. (2) I had to
understand why those people had these intentions. (3) I had to forgive
these people for the hurt which they have caused me.

Nick, I have deep respect for what you wrote:

>Perhaps a crucial role of change facilitators, such as the people
>on the list, is to provide the support, love and attention to enable
>people to release their feelings and thus unlearn their rigid
>patterns of behaviour.

I also do not want to undo all the careful work on learning organisations.
But I have this feeling that we are nearing the end of a dispensation in
which each of us can rely on others for our healing. We will have to learn
how to heal ourselves of hurting experiences because there are too few
others who can truely facilitate us and too many who say they can do it
for whatever reason, but actually cannot facilitate us.

Some fellow believers close to me say that I do not trust God enough since
He has the power to heal millions of people without needing human
assistance. But Oliver Cromwell had a most remarkable saying based on his
own hurting experiences:-
        Trust in God and keep you gun powder dry.

It means that the trust in God entails a personal preparation so as to
become ready for whatever the mind has become aware of. That personal
preparation is not a trust itself -- the trust in the self. It is a
recognition of the importance of the seven essentialities like wholeness
in the personality of each human. Wholeness, for example, is so important
to my own personal evolution that I cannot expect other people to succeed
where I fail and then blame them when they fail also. I can summarise all
this by saying that authentic learning (and not unlearning) is essential
even to my healing.

I am now very aware of something else too. Whenever I succeed where others
have failed, I emerge into a higher level which, on closer inspection,
they lack because of their failures. This awareness is not something to
boast of or make it fashionable because this will destroy this awareness
far easier than its difficult emergence. A boasting awareness like a faked
awareness are the very reasons why humankind have become so suspicious of
spiritual emergences and in the process nearly lost its humaneness. This
awareness is rather something which I have to repect with humbleness so as
to let the power of these complex emergences be of value to others as I
also had been in need of them.

The power of humaneness is destroyed when humans cease with authentic
learning as individuals and as organisations.

The power of humaneness is to know how very fragile each human is against
the organisational power of other humans.

The power of humaneness is to bow before the higher order emergences
within each of us so that they rather than us can be beneficial to other
humans.

The power of humaneness is ultimately shared with caring love in a
graceful manner.

What causes our search for the meaning of "unlearning"? It is the lack of
care in selfish love which causes the hurting experiences in each of us.
Yet caring love is not sufficient. Caring love without grace is as
impossible as sunshine without a sun, as impossible as a desert without
arid conditions or a picture without colours. Caring love with grace is
the key to dignifying other people. Caring love with grace is like a child
who has the capacity to sing with laughter and dance with joy. Take that
grace away and even caring love can become banal.

With care and 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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