Replying to LO24446 --
Dear Organlearners,
Roger Key <roger.key@onet.co.uk> writes:
>Employment of people is systemicly a smart move because
>of the interdependence and cohesivness it produces - rather
>than lots of self employed people.
Greetings Roger,
I am extraordinary struck by this sentence because a little earlier today
I had a discussion with a biologist on the shift from prokaryotic cells to
eukaryotic cells 4 billion years ago.
We were standing out in the open on campus and I pointed to him as far as
the eye could see, asking: Show me one artifact which resulted from an
independent person rather than people working in some or other
organisation.
Humans become very powerful as soon as they direct their efforts through
organisations.
So is the smart move to bring humans together as an organisations or to
base the formation of an organisation on employment? A very intersting
observation concerns the many and diverse organisations which hit the dust
the past in our country the past twenty years. The last sections to close
down is the employment personel -- they outlast even the managers.
What have become of organisations in which people participate
"voluntarily", i.e. without any employment contract? They are becoming
less and decrease in members. Why? Is it because of organisations based on
employment which overtake them, indicating that the employement based
organisations are fitter?
I think it is because employment involves some Systems Thinking whereas
voluntary associations nowadays seriously lacks it.
>However I think the system has been shifted to the generation
>of profit rather than the development of the local 'economy'
>which will lead to the economic argument for employment
>rather than the local cohesivness argument.
Yes, I experience it most painfully in our local parish. If money is not
involved, people do not want to get involved. Make something more
attractive by increasing the monetary gains in it and the number of people
who participate increases dramatically. Since this happens in a parish
where Mammon ought not to be served, it is a great concern to me.
You also write:
>Now if we move from sustainable / subsistence activity to
>surplus producing activity the leader - employer - now has
>material gain as well as robust geneology, and can use that
>material gain to improve their own breedability - get a better
>mate.
Sometimes in more cynical moments I wonder whether this is not the most
important activity on campus.
>I have absolutly no evidence for the above, but as one of
>many possible explorations as to the implicit aim of the
>system it works for me. I would love to read your comments.
Roger, I have no qualms because making the implicit explicit requires many
manifestations before we can get a clue how the implicit works. There is
no more profound example as the atempts of people through the ages to
articulate how LEP (the Law of Entropy Production) works.
In fact, I find your evolutionistic approach rather refreshing when
compared to the algorithmic driven contributions which I have to work
through. It is crazy how many people and in how many walks of life they
want to live by recipes. When almost every student at university wants to
learn by recipes, has it not become close to midnight?
My own approach to understanding reality I prefer to call "deep
creativity". What happens in a chemical reaction outside a living organism
is for me just as as important as what happens inside the organism
generation after generation. In other words, I think of evolution as "deep
evolution" which occurs in both the physical and spiritual dimensions of
reality.
I see that you are also thinking along the lines of "deep evolution" by
seeing evolution not only in nature, but also in culture. Making use of
Darwin, Schumacher and the Whananu in one contribution to make your point
makes my point. I suspect that your awareness to the importance of
wholeness increase almost weekly. To say that wholeness is $important$ to
evolution is one thing, but to realise that it is $essential$ shifts one
to a new level of consciousness.
When people at different levels of conciousness begin to communicate, it
is then when human nature reveals itself authentically.
In my search for understanding "Why employ a person" I often look at
nature rather than culture, trying to see if I can make sense out of
symbiosis by depicting it in terms of employment. There are four kinds of
symbiosis in nature: commensalism, inquilinism, mutualism and parasitism.
I need not to spell out which kind of symbiosis is predominant among human
organisations and how they are geared on employment.
When parasitism take control of an ecosystem, usually by some ignorant
intervention by humans, the degradation of the ecosystem is a sad sight
for sore eyes. Nature's answer to this kind of parasitism is to let it
take its full course so that it INEVITABLY will destroy itself. When we
look at human culture over a time span long enough to study the history
(rise and fall) of civilisations, parasitism again takes the main toll.
Here in Africa where people have to export raw materials at cheap prices
and import value added artifacts made from them at exorbitant prices,
parasitism is rampant. Make any proposal for collaboration and the first
question asked is a shot into the heart of the proposal -- "what is in it
for me?"
The majority of people here believe that this is how the rest of the world
works. Even when they make an effort to care, they will first hoard so as
to protect themselves. When I try to explain to some that care involves a
mutualistic symbiosis (obviously not in such technical terms) because of
the cohesion (togetherness) which is intrinsic to care, their eyes show no
flicker of understanding.
Perhaps I am wrong. If not, then we will soon have to bring a
significant change about. Rampant parasitism is deadly.
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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