Replying to LO24392 --
Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Dressler <winfried.dressler@voith.de> writes:
>Often, money is NEEDED in order to provide or create
>something WANTED, like in your friends case. Problems arise,
>when wants and needs are confused. It sounds obvious to want
>what one needs, but it is not. I think it is not even valid. For
>example,
>I want to contribute to our company. In order to do so, I need
>- among others - money for which I can buy eating, clothing, housing,
>my needs. As soon as I would say, that I contribute in order to get
>my needs satisfied, my contribution would be corrupted.
Greetings Winfried,
Thank you very much for your contribution.
It made me think once more of Maslow's five levels of needs and what is
presently happening in SouthERN Africa.
The lowest level is the need for basic sources of sustaining life: food,
clothes, house. If people do not have these sources, then they need money
to by them. But to have money they need knowledge to create something
which they can sell for money. Thus they they need something of a level
higher (creative knowledge) to satisfy their basic needs.
Over our borders in Zimbabwe a terrible thing is happening. The white
farmers own some 4 million hectares of land which they have improved
through the years. The government owns some 3 million hectares of land
with no improvement. The rest of the surface is tribal land as it was
before the days of colonisation. The "war veterans" (of a bush war which
ended 20 years ago, but of whom the majority are now barely adults) are
claiming cultivated land of white farmers rather than tribal land or the
uncultivated land of the government.
Their claims are based on their basic needs and thus seems to vindicate
that basic needs have to be satisfied first. But they have no money nor
knowledge how to sustain these needs without having to commit acts of
piracy. Just as other governments all over the world their own government
has promised them already twenty years ago a sound economy and a sound
education so as to sustain these basic needs. But as a result of
corruption these promises were never actualised. Taxes were channeled into
other destinations than creating a sound economy and sound education. The
cherry on the cake is to blame the colonisation of the past eighty years
for solely causing these effects even twenty years after the colonisation
has been ended.
The second level of Maslow is that of security. Here in South Africa
itself the security forces have retrogressed persistently the past tirty
years (twenty years of apartheid and ten years of post apartheid.) Rich
people here in South Africa have become used to buying security with
money. At first they thought that money could buy them security. But they
also have become the victims of violent crimes, relatively far more than
those who have only enough in the basic needs. They get murdered for
driving an expensive car or having luxurious technologies in their
fortressed homes and not for basic needs like food and clothes. These
expensive takes are seldom bartered for basic needs, but rather enjoyed
without any respect as long as they last.
The highest level is that of self-actualisation. Again and most
tragically, people are told day in and day out how they should conform to
the ideas of the opportunistic leaders in every walk of life rather than
people actualising themselves as humans able to care for others. Unfound
criticism, gross stereo typing and clever mind engineering so as to
establish the identities of friend and foe are at the order of the day.
Meanwhile corruption among the self-proclaimed leaders increases hand over
hand. Thus self-actualisation has become fiction.
This bring me to your stark clinical thesis:
>This leads me to the toughest thesis I ever dared to pose
>to this list:
>
>*** An organization which defines it's identity
>*** in terms of providing needs to their customers
>*** will not emerge into a learning organization.
>
>Am I gone mad now?
No, Winfried, you have emerged into that sober state of mind to understand
these lamentable immergences which have become so common to life in Africa
south of the Sahara.
I myself have become convinced by having dialogues with hundreds of people
locally that those who are still sober of mind (according to my opinion
;-) are without exception people who consider sustaining the highest order
as important as sustaining the lowest order. They cannot explain why they
think so, but they are convinced that none of these levels can be argued
out of the picture.
When I tell them about how an organisation can emerge into a LO, they
usually have one big question which blocks all their mental explorations
into the LO concept. Will the LO still be able to provide in the needs
which the present organisation(s) provides for by belonging to them? The
disparity between this question and their tacit knowledge refered to in
the last sentence of the last paragraph often strikes me as most peculiar.
When I point out the logical contradition or conceptual gap between the
two, they usually become bewildered rather than trying to seek for an
answer which makes sense.
Winfried, your thesis makes much sense for me, but it needs the concept of
"ordinate feedback loops" to make such sense. This is exactly where money
fails -- it cannot follow or represent "ordinate feedback loops".
Thank you very much for posing this daring thesis. May it contribute to a
fruitful LO-dialogue how to prevent the corruption of caring love.
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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