Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all you caretakers of care.
What is corruption? Etymologically it comes from Latin by
"com-"="cor-"=together and "rumpo"=break. Thus it means "to break what are
together". In other words, to destroy the integrity of something.
What is caring love? It is the higest order into which the human spirit
can emerge as a result of "entropy production". Its emergence depends on
the seven essentialities. Two of them play an important role in integrity,
namely sureness and wholeness. Thus integrity, as well as the other five
essentialities, are important in the emergence of caring love.
The very "to break what are together" of corruption points to an impairing
of wholeness and hence also integrity. Therefor it is not surprising that
the tollerance of Jan Smuts (father of holism) to curruption was zero.
What happens when the wholeness gets impaired? The very "entropy
production" which previously sustained the constructive emergence of
caring love will now cause its destructive immergence. The result will be
something of a lower order like banal knowledge, devoid of caring love.
A couple of weeks ago somebody called me with a rather serious problem.
This person began a new service in the organisation which he works in. The
service is based on loving care. He convinced management that this service
was necessary, but they were not convinced that he could manage the
service. So they appointed an existing manager for him. The problem this
person now has is that the decisions of this appointed manager take the
loving care out of the service he wants to provide.
Upon my enquiries it seems to appear that the appointed manager does not
care for wholeness at all. He is, what one will call, the perfect "line
function manager" for a hirarchial managemant strategy. Thus it is clear
why his decisions cause the loving care in the new service to hit the
dust. It also makes me wonder why in the first place the management team
decided to provide the new service. Was the "loving care" merely the catch
phrase for a new band wagon to jump on? Was it a soothing of their
conscience? What role did wholeness played in their decisions?
Yesterday a dear fellow learner wrote to me with another problem which
falls in the same category. He wants to provide an internet service in
which loving care plays the key role. He wants to provide the service
especially to people who cannot pay in money for it, but who needs it
desperately. The person is not financially in a position to fund and
sustain the service. The service is of such a nature that even some very
rich people are aware of their need for it. They are rich enough and and
also willing to pay not only for what they receive, but to sustain the
service for those who cannot pay for it by money.
The fellow learner now has a serious problem. Will the funding of the
service in general in terms of payment for service rendered to those who
can afford it, not corrupt the service so that the loving care in the
service hit the dust? Some rich persons may demand, on paying for the
service to them, the very impairing of wholeness and integrity. How can he
prevent such a possible curruption?
Why is it possible that some demands of some persons who can afford to pay
will impair wholeness? It all has to do with the seven essentialities and
money. Money is a token for bartering things which can be quantified. Some
quantifications are extensive depends on scaling), thus pointing to
spareness ("quantity-limit"). The others are intensive (invariant to
scaling), thus pointing to otherness ("quality-variety"). A piece of iron
have, for example, mass (extensive) and temperature (intensive). Both are
meaured physically and can thus be quantified. When bartering that piece
of iron and receiving money as a token of its value, we do it terms of its
mass and not its temperature. Thus it seems as if money can function as a
token for spareness, but not for otherness.
Can money function as a token for the other five essentialities?
Specifically, can it function as a token for wholeness? No, nobody whill
pay the same amount of money for one whole ox as for one whole chicken.
Thus it is futile trying to pay with money for a service based on
wholeness being the very key to that service.
Yet many people believe that money can buy everything. The power of having
money is based on this belief. It is this very power of money which
corrupts that which it buys, but which it cannot pay for. When money buy
wholeness, it corrupts wholeness since it is impossible to pay for
wholeness. Consequently, when money buys a service rich in caring love,
it will eventually detroy that caring love in the service because it
cannot pay for the wholeness essential to the caring love. Money cannot
care for caring love.
I have emailed back to the fellow learner how I try to keep a sound course
through this labyrinth of perceptions. I have now also set out to all you
fellow learners my own systems thinking on this very contencious issue.
But I still feel that we have here such an immense problem that we all are
in need of much more learning. Thus I put this problem before us so that
we can have a serious LO-dialogue on it:
How can we prevent the corruption of caring love?
I have painted a picture involving two cases: decisions (by management)
and money (for service rendered). There are also other different cases
which I can think of and many others which you will want to mention. Let
us hear about them and let us find a sound solution to this most pressing
problem.
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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