Replying to LO24639 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>Dear At de Lange,
>
>I have a new vision this morning; I see a new field, in the
>new field an old tree and playing in the branches are differing
>children all singing. Here is some learning from me to you...
>and anyone else who happens to be listening : - ) in and out.
Greetings Andrew,
Thank you for your learning and thoughts.
What is old? I have seen some plants from trees to oddly shaped succulents
older than a thousand years (older than the oldest university -- Bologna)
and still very much alive! I have seen innumerous plants a year or two
old and close to the end of their life-span.
It is almost impossible to transplant an old tree from and "old field" to
a "new field". An environment is close to the end of its life-span when it
has been depleted too much in nutrients and polluted too much by poisons.
Children sing easily, but adults seemingly rather listen to singing -- and
only occasionaly. One tragedy in all of Southern Africa as one moves from
the rural regions to the metropolitan centres, is the singing of adults at
work and leisure becomes less until it vanishes. Another tragedy is that
as poverty, famine, corruption and violence in rural regions take over,
the singing also vanishes, even among children.
What is your vision for me? Where has all the singing gone to?
I will want your "old tree" to refer to something very old, yet very much
alive and still far away from the end of its life-span.
I will want your "new field" to be a transformed "old field". This
transformation will have to involve a dialectical approach -- get involved
with fertilising and get "exvolved" with polluting.
I will want your "differing children all singing" to be not only all
humans, but also animals (often singing in strange sounds) and plants
(singing tacitly).
I will want age to play no role.
I will want to be president so as to begin my first "state of the nation"
address with a speach, carefully working feelings and thinking into a
whole -- and then suddenly like Beethoven in his Choral Fantacy switch
over to singing so that the rest of my address will shock the nation into
its senses!
This morning when I drove my granddaughter Jessica to school she announced
that she wants to sing for me. She began singing in English, making up her
own words and tune as she went along -- "What a beautiful day God has
given to us all ....." (English is not her mothertongue. Yesterday she
received a birthday card from my two youngest children on a two year
working holiday in England. She is determined to go and visit them and
realises that she will have to be able to speak English.)
Early this morning it was very cold because the first frost of winter has
fallen. This is a sign for a fine day -- the sun will displace the killing
chill of night for most of the day.
>One hero I have among many is David Bohm. He I feel spoke
>eloquently for the 'joining up' of science and art, he was an
>integrative soul.
Yes, David Bohm was very much aware of how essential wholeness is to life
and creativity.
>I would like to share my learning with you from the Ginkgo
>tree. It is reckoned the oldest living species of tree on earth.
>When it appeared first giant horsetails and ferns dominated
>plant life, there were no mammals only dinosaurs and their
>precursors the 'thecodants'. Relatives of the Ginkgo biloba
>appeared 250-270 million years ago. The ice age caused the
>extinction of al but one of the Ginkgo species except the
>G.biloba.
[sadly -- snip]
Thank you for a gripping story. You seem to have realised how living
specimens on the verge of extinction grips my heart! The "strange kingdom"
of succulent plants spanning dozens of diverse families has many such
cases. I have listened and corresponded with 20th century naturalists like
Allain Dyer, John Lavranos, Alfred Lau and Friedrich Ritter who had
gripping stories to tell. Finding another specimen of only one specimen
previously founded has often more adventure and suspense than the best of
dramas and novels. I had my fair share too, for example, in rediscovering
Euphorbia fortuita and Euphorbia albertensis.
>Among the healing properties attributed to it are as diverse
>as asthma, transplant rejection, cerebral insufficiency, shock
>and stroke.
This makes Ginkgo biloba very much like Aloe vera. This plant can now be
propagated only vegetatively. It was already used in Rome and Alexandria
more than two millenia ago. The original population of A vera was
somewhere in North Africa. Because of its diverse healing properties, the
natural population soon became wiped out. Only one clone survived in
cultivation by way of vegetative propagation. Since virtually all Aloe
species are self-sterile (a very important mechanism in the "kingdom of
succulents" to ensure biodiversity), this clone cannot fertilise itself by
its own pollen, even when using different plants (produced by taking
cuttings) from the same clone. No more meiosis, but only mitosis for which
humans now have to take the stewardship.
>My questions are these. Bohm states clearly with integrity
>and authority that 'the essence of human life is art- as a whole
>movement in which both end and means are the action of fitting.
>-' So in the creation of creation which was more fitting to our
>lasting, the Bomb or the tree, which healed, which lived, which
>gave and which took? Bohm thought that through a kind of art
>science may be viewed upside down. The art he expressed as
> - a movement of fitting together - is (as) what is universal in
>nature and culture, both/and. Einstein taught us along with
>David Bohm to see the 'field'. In the field here I see one of David
>Bohm's dreams come alive in my face; that through and with
> '-- common consciousness we then have something new - a
>new kind of intelligence.'
Dear Andrew, what is art? The greatist art of all for me is the Creation
of the Creator! It has information in itself which tells that it began
with the Big Bang -- the same energy as now, but zero entropy. Since then
its entropy has been steadily increasing as its complexification. For the
last two hundred years (since Lamarck) this one-to-many-mapping of
Creation in the biorealm has been known as evolution. It took billions of
years of evolution on earth itself before the species Homo sapiens
emerged, sufficiently prepared bodily and mentally to observe this
information and tell the story self. When I try to contemplate both
Creator&Creation, I keep ending up in awe as my own spirit dwindels into
nothing -- what a GREAT FEELING-THINKING. How priviledged are we not to
share in this GREAT FEELING-THINKING -- the push-pull action of the GREAT
ORDINATE CYBER LOOP.
Priviledged? How many specimens of the species Homo sapiens share in this
GREAT FEELING-THINKING? The first part "homo" in "Homo sapiens" is the
name of the genus. A genus can have one to many species and every species
can have one (like in Ginkgo biloba and Aloe vera) to many specimens The
many can easily exceed trillions time trillions. The "homo" comes from
Greek, meaning "all the same". It is opposite to "hetero" which means
"some different". The "sapiens" comes from Latin, meaning "wise". The
genus Homo sapiens belongs to the family Hominidae. The family has only
one other genus which is the evolutionary precursor of the genus Homo. It
is the genus Australopithecus, now extinct. The "austro" means south,
opposite to "boreo" (north). Why? For example, within 200 miles from
Pretoria (SOUTH Africa, SOUTHERN Africa, SOUTHERN hemisphere) fossils of
several species of the genus Australopithecus have been unearthed!
Dear Andrew? I repeat. How many specimens of the species Homo sapiens
share in this GREAT FEELING-THINKING? Should the name of humankind not
rather have been "Hetero sapiens"? What about "Homo ignoro"? Many people
will try to sell any emergence, even human babies, so as to make money.
They will even try to sell knowledge, that which emerges from
self-experience! Up to a some decades ago, few have proceeded to that
stage where they try to sell even wisdom, that which emerges from
knowledge! In order to do so, they have to corrupt wisdom, first by
calling it by new names like p-------------m and c---------n, and then to
push it as an "add-on" to knowledge.
In their battle to push selling, they have to tell anything.
What selling people will not tell in the name of anything, even health,
peace or love, is not worth telling.
Here is some wisdom. What has to come from within cannot come
from without because the becoming is irreversible. Thus what has
to come from within cannot be sold unless it becomes corrupted
into a banality because irreversibility is constructive and
destructive.
Buyers should be aware of such worthless banalities and rather
seek the genuine articles which have to emergence constructively
from within. Wisdom is such a priceless artistic property which can
never be fragmented into an article for sale.
I am among others a chemist so that I prefer a role of toilet paper above
a handkerchief ;-) How many times had I not to offer a student (female and
male) a role of toilet paper to blow the nose and wipe the eyes dry. How
many times had I not wished to plug my ears with that very paper when they
swore in their anger and frustration at a system which tries to destroy
their wisdom so as to force them on the bandwagon of some or other
banality in the name of academy, science or technology?
Just yesterday I had another PhD student in my office. He has severe
writing dyslexy, so much so that he could not complete his high school. He
was sent by his rich family to a farm in the back rurals where he could
not be an embarrassment to them. There he managed to learn authentically
by adventurous field work and painstakenly reading enough to embarrass
many a professor in a certain subject. Finally a brave professor in our
university on that subject fought his arms off to get him admitted to a
MSc study -- the admission was a miracle. What the student accomplished
was a miracle too. Now the student wants to complete his PhD also and
SPECIFICALLY by showing exactly how wholeness has guided his whole study.
Because of the wholeness involved, he has proceeded beyond that subject
into many other subjects of other faculties too. In other words, he does
not care a damn for all the academical fragmentation and specialisation.
But this brings him in direct confrontation with his promoters who have
been carefully selected so that the "favour extended to him" does not
"corrupt the certfication system" of professional specialities.
He came to me because somehow he found out that I seem to be the only
local fool who knows anything about wholeness and "entropy production" --
things which he has learned himself too. He speaks of Goethe, Smuts,
Bohm, Prigogine, Maturana and Capra as if they are close friends -- his
blue eyes lit with an inner fire, but swelled in tears to keep that fire
from consuming his soul.
Andrew, last week I had a PhD student from the engineering faculty. It
was the same for him. He wants to work in this "new field" of your vision,
the "field" which I think is called technically complexity. But once
again his superiors (I cannot call them mentors) want to prune and divide
his work so as to fit it into their specialisations. Whereas he
understands wholeness to be essential in his work, they care for their own
positions. He also was surpised to find out that I had covered a terrain
on "entropy production" which he now is also traveling in.
A week before a PhD student in psychology from another university came to
visit me. It was the same for her too. A couple of weeks before that it
was a PhD student in theology from the same university. She was close to
the point of commiting suicide because of her superiors telling her that
she is a failure for wanting to honour wholeness and becoming. Earlier
this morning I had a phone call from a PhD student in cumputer science at
yet another university close by. I could hear the lostness in his voice
when he begged me for an appointment. As usual I said: "Come whenever you
want just as you are -- just phone me to say you are on your way. I have
nothing more important than you so that an appointment is not necessary."
Next to my computer screen lies the role of toilet paper.
What selling people will not tell in the name of anything, even health,
peace or love, is not worth telling. So what am I selling because as a
teller many people say that I try to outsmart everyone else? How clever is
my scheme when I add that nobody should trust my words and that it is
better to burn it than to preserve it? Why spending so much "free energy"
on "painting rich pictures" since sources of "free energy" (of which
motivation is a manifestation) are fast becoming the most expensive
commodity?
I do sell things like succulent plants. I will even try to make a living
by selling used toilet paper if there is nothing else left over for me to
sell. But I will never sell that which characterise us as the species Homo
sapiens for that will lead to the extinction of this species.
Dear fellow learners, Andrew's vision is crystal clear to me since it is
my own too. I have not that poetic ability to tell it in such few words as
Andrew. Why not? I have to use many words.
* In their battle to push selling, they have to tell anything.
In my endeavour to pull everone to vision so clearly spelled
out by Andrew, I also have to tell on anything.
* They fight a battle, but like others I am buzzy fertilising
and tilling the "old field" into a "new field", using many words
to do so.
* The soldiers make dirt, but the farmers work with dirt. The
soldiers kill the farmers, but the farmers feed the soldiers.
* Soldiers waste money so fast in their destructions that
they sometimes have to proclaim martial law to do so.
But farmers have to work with dilligence and faith, knowing
well that drought or flood, locusts or settlers, may take
everything before their produce are ready to give or sell as
it pleases them.
* To become or not to become is not a question any more.
Soldiers consume without giving back, but farmers produce
taking some for themselves so as to keep on producing.
What do we want to become, either soldiers or farmers?
>'Every condition promulges not only itself --- it promulges
>What grows after and out of itself, And the dark hush
>promulges as much as any.'
>Whitman.
Yes, so is it even with the Big Bang at which Entropy Production began
irreversibly.
It is Thursday. I have to stop so as to join Jessica in enjoying the last
hour of sunshine. Only kids have the power to stop me telling on anything.
It is the power of their own telling.
Listen to the children singing in an old tree in a new field.
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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