Reification and reiteration LO24572

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 05/08/00


Replying to LO24524 --

Dear Organlearners,

Andrew Cambell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:

>At, thanks for the tremendous beauty of your visions.
>Both short and long.

Greetings Andrew,

Thank you for your kind words. Try to think to think the "At de Lange" out
of the "I, me" and put rather "human, one" into it (Afrikaans: "mens",
German: "Mensch")

>In LO22615. You and Jan Lelie write each other around
>Judgement. In that posting you say, on page 4 of 9 in
> paragraphs 5 and 6,
>" Yes, - thinking has brought a new thrusting into Creation.
>It's like a tail of a fish. You call it 'creative'. But the fish also
>needs a head to control its movement, you call it 'reactive'.
>-- heart mind, ramjet/feedback --SNIP
> -- we have something very, very important here..." Then you
>write that you will make a contribution on it some time,
>"- I plan to call it, 'Boosted creativity and thereafter.'"
>
>Please will you consider writing that when you have time?

Dear Andrew, I cannot remember all the details which I had in mind when I
made that offer. You also know how it is with postponing a painting. When
you finally begin to create it, it grows from that day onwards, but it has
lost the innocence of its birth. Hopefully it will gain in wisdom which
comes with age through learning.

As I tended to my fishes early this morning, cleaning the tanks from the
daily debris and then feeding the fishes, I thought how they depend on my
daily care. Should I go away for a week or so, my dear wife would take
over the caring for me. They would not miss me, although she would until I
would come back.

But should I for some or other reason fail to come back to them or her,
how different it would be for them. She would soon have to get rid of them
because she will have to care for herself. That will require all her
creative attention. They cannot care for themselves at all in their
completely artificial home. It is with sadness that I think about the
society we live in. Should I not have made provision for her, she would
have found it far more difficult to stay alive in our habitat than they in
their natural habitat.

Yes, in their habitat these fishes have to avoid some deadly predators
such as piranhas or fish eagles. Yet many still reach an age too old to
flee away from lurking death. However, there are some diseases like
Hexamita which after infecting their head will systematically destroy
their brains whether young or old. Hence, although they have the same
"power of tail" to flee away, they do not the "power of head" to sense
danger and to guide their flight. They will perish because of a lack of
reactive creativity -- feedback control.

For all tissue activity in the fish, even in the nervous system, they use
up mostly proteins (consisting of aminoacids) to sustain it. Burning up
these proteins produce ammonia, carbon dioxide and water. Only on distant
migrations will they also use body fat (oil) which does not contain amino
groups. On the other, we humans rather burn up carbohydrates, producing
only carbon dioxide and water. Thus fish and humans use different sources
of energy.

(Since my diabetes fourteen months ago as a result of influenza, I now
also have to rely on proteins as my source of energy, avoiding
carbohydrates as far as possible. Thus my metabolism had to become
somewhat like that of a fish. Our GP was shocked to learn about me new
diet since "the books" say that the human brain uses 30% of the body's
carbohydrate uptake. According to him my brain ought not to function any
more because my carbohydrate uptake is now much less than what merely my
brain needs. Perhaps some fellow learners will agree with him that my
brain is dysfunctional. However, by avoiding carbohydrates, I keep the
glucose -- actual fuel for cells -- level in my blood low. Since there is
little, if any, insulin to pass the glucose from the blood to the tissue
cells, an over concentration of glucose in the blood cannot happen with
all the diabetic nasty effects.)

Why do we, fish and other animals need different kinds of chemical fuel
from a diversity of food? We say that we need the energy released when our
tissues and nerves burn up this fuel. We think that this is a smart
answer. But two hundreds years ago nobody could give such a smart answer.
Two hundred of years from now people may even smile at the answer which I
now will give.

When the fuel molecules (simple aminoacids or monosaccarids like glucose)
get burnt by oxygen in tissue and nerve cells, they get broken up into far
less complex molecules. They loose so much organisation as organic
molecules that their simple products are called inorganic molecules. By
giving up this complex organisation, they make much of their potential
("being") energy available as "free energy" which has "to become". Losing
their complex organisation makes the "becoming" of the "free energy" an
irreversible consequence. This "free energy" is then transformed by
various "becoming patterns" into appropiate kinds of "becoming" energy
like the contracting of a muscle or the propagating of an electrical pulse
along a nerve cell. Hence a tail will move or a brain will think. These
"becoming patterns" which cause the one-to-many transformation of "free
energy" all have the form
        (intensive difference) x (extensive flow) > 0
This general form is characterestic of all entropy producing processes.

Let us think what the smart answer ought to be two hundred years from now
should Homo sapiens not become extinct because of the Homo ignoro within
every specimen of Homo sapiens taking over control of it. Of what use is
it when a tail can be moved or a brain synapses be fired, but we have lost
our ability to sense danger and flee to safety? What is the deadly disease
of the spiritual mind which will do the same as when Hexamita infects the
physical brain of a fish? What will make all we know of basic science
worthless even like the becoming (moving) of a fish's tail or the becoming
(firing) of a neuron by means of "entropy production"? Do we eat merely to
provide "free energy" for catabolic becomings like motion or thought? Do
the fish not also eat for anabolic becomings like to grow, to become
mature, to mate, to produce offspring and to care for them until they can
care for themselves? Should our catabolic thoughts on basic science and
technology of how the physical world becomes in theory and model not also
be complemented with anabolic thoughts by which the personality will
become so rich that it is eventually capable of caring love whatever it
takes? Are we aware just how linear and analytic the controlled
destructions of catabolism is? Are we aware how much we need to complement
it with the branching and complexifying constructions of anabolism?

Unlashing with the mind powers like the brute force of the nucleus, the
sleek force of the atom, the delicate force of the molecule and the vital
force of DNA as well as enzymes is but like the wagging of the fish's
tail. They all have developed from one another by "entropy production" and
they all depend on "entropy production" to propel the fish forward like
the mind is also propelled forward. But without a head that fish is
doomed like the species becomes doomed with a deadly infection of the
head. The head belongs to he fish likes its tail. It has to steer the
fish by its other fins away from danger and towards its destiny.

So what is the mental danger from which we have to stear and the mental
destiny to which we have to stear, using the wagging of our mental tail by
means of free energy through entropy production? The mental danger is
Homo ignoro -- the ignorance in each of us by which we will bring
destruction to ourselves and the rest of humankind. The mental destiny is
Homo sapiens -- the wisdom in each of us by which we will reconstruct
human culture so that it can bloom with all humane values like honesty,
integrity and caring love.

Both the tail and head are connected by different patterns so as to
function with quality as one unique whole within its bounds. How many are
these patterns and what do we know of each one? How do each one take us
from the bare entropy production in the tail of our life to the caring
love in the head of our life and back to the tail again? How do these
patterns influence each other? Will we miss them as a beloved who went
away never to come back when they get destroyed step by step though a
deadly infection? Will our orgamisations be able to care for those
remaining when society at large has also been infected? Who will miss them
when all of humankind become extinct?

When the tail and the head of the fish do not commute any more, the fish
is doomed. The end is merely a matter of the arrow of time.

Andrew, I have tried to put the issue of creativity at the tacit level. I
did it because I feaal melancholic. Perhaps you wanted it exactly the
other way around. But this is how learning works -- to get to the other
side ;-)

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

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


"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.