Replying to LO24623 --
Dear Organlearners,
Sajeela M Ramsey <sajeelacore@juno.com> writes:
>Preview: a long-ish post, but hopefully learningful and
>worthwhile.
Dear Sajeela,
You made many accusations on what I have written. Should they help you in
your further learning, then let them all be true. Should they reflect
your learning up to now, then let us get into some further learning.
>You make a lot of gender-culture based assumptions in this
>statement---how do you know that God created women or
>men? Did it ever occur to you that there is a Goddess creator?
>How is it you seem to know that man was asleep when woman
>was created? Were you there?
Sexual differences among higher order animals is chromosome based. Among
plants (dioecious) it is not chromosome based. Among even simpler
prokaryotic microbes its is unknown. Animals plants and microbes are
physical things, is not more, like chromosomes are too. I believe that God
is spiritual so that sexual identifications is misplaced.
I believe that God is one of content (substance), but many of form. In the
Bible this many is depicted as three personalities. I seldom think of
personalty in terms of sex, although I am aware that many others do so.
Some believe that Creation happened on its own. Some believe that the
Creator left Creation on its own after creating it. Others believe that
the Creator is still creating. Some say God created man and woman. Some
dare to ask "How". God said "WE created clay and we created the human by
using clay." Perhaps the specualtions of biologists on the original
evolution of prokaryotic cells in the pores between clay particles is not
so far fetched.
I was "asleep" when I was created. I was shocked into consciousness at an
age of about four years. I once met a wise Nama (a Xhoi nation) in
Namaqualand. We got into some deep talking. He said this: "When men enters
the world as baby boys, the first human they connect to is a woman. When
they leave the world, the last tears shed on them is by a woman. Woman are
just here -- its is men who come and go. Why cannot we wake up to this
fact."
Have you ever lived in a desert like a Nama or a San? Is it right for me
to disqualify any of your imaginative thinking on the desert since you was
not there? I am not a kid any more, although I wish I was one again. We
must take care to promote the imagination of kids.
>Your Socratic style of writing seems to me to be something
>of a block in your own way
Let us think about Socrates. Some think he was the leader of "the gang of
three" who corrupted the Western World with his feelingless thinking. His
wife was Xanthipe. She lashed out with her tongue whatever feeling came to
her mind. Perhaps the duality of the sexes degenerated there into a
dialectical conflict.
Socrates did not teach any systemic outcome. He merely
tried to learn others how to question all things so as to become
wise. He taught a systemic way -- the becoming -- and found
joy in the outcome -- the being --.
Questing-answering is a profound way of problem-solving.
Problem-solving is but one of five elementary sustainers for
our creativity. That is why too much problem-solving alone
cannot sustain creativity.
---that is, if you really are seeking to understand women
better (and in general, to learn about understanding and connecting
with
all people better). You continue, saying:
>I want to know what are you FEELING. In really simple simple
>affective words, I want to hear about how you FEEL---not in
>fetishizing objectifying abstractions ABOUT feelings and
>other things.
My feelings in my contributions are woven into my thinking and vice versa.
I do it because I believe that this makes any temperament fine and give
endurance to once spirituality. I do not believe in fragmenting my
feelings and thinking from each other so as to specialise in the one or
the other.
You are free to believe otherwise.
>I as your co-learner don't HAVE to do anything. I don't HAVE
>to care for my personality bifurcations (and here you assume
>that I have them, yet this may or may not be true, other then
>in your own personal gestalt) and I don't HAVE to be sensitive
>to anything. I may choose to do be, but I don't HAVE to.
I am willing to wager a bet that it is impossible for you to demonstrate
that you "don't HAVE to do anything". Is becoming not as essential to our
lives as being?
Let us get to Jan Smuts.
(snip)
>I personally cannot subscribe to some (probably) caucasian
>and certainly male as THE great authority on wholism and
>evolution.
(snip)
>I don't know Smutts and I don't assume that he was sensitive
>to anything. And no, it doesn't surprise me, somehow that he
>was accused of being a womaniser. Any relation between the
>word "smut" and him by chance?
Smuts is the Lowlandic spelling for Smith
What has greater authority than a nuclear bomb? E = mc^2 Who created E =
mc^2 ? Einstein. How? By his mentality. What has authority over this
mentality? Wholeness, among other things. Study Faraday since of all
scientists he was the most careful to deny that he has any authority over
others.
Einstein said that should people have had Smuts insight on wholeness in
evolution, they would never have created an atomb bomb.
It is somewhat dangerous to call Smuts an authority on wholeness. He
never got it any further than a Baccalaureus degree! But he was recognised
for his thinking on wholeness by 28 honourary PhD degrees from
universities all over the world and the chancelourship of Cambridge.
You better have to read what Smuts had to say on authorities in general.
Perhaps you will recognise a friend in him.
>At, I would personally appreciate your input more if you had
>more questions and could resist what I perceive to be a
>compulsion on your behalf to give so many answers.
Are you not asking for the Socratic method?
>Language can lack direct implications of inferiority, yet still
>promote inequality. It may be "androcentric" -- treating male
>experience and perceptions as the norm while ignoring or
>trivializing female experience -- without being overtly sexist.
>I pick up on this in your language use At, and hope by bringing
>my perceptions to your awareness that you might begin to
>explore expressing yourself differently.
Have you ever tried to reform the English language so as to become
genderless? Is language the outcome of "dassein" creativity or "mitsein"
creativity? Do you know how I wish I could communicate with you in my
mothertongue as it is spoken specifically by people living in the deserts.
Do you know which is the youngest language in the world with the least of
gender specifications? Do you know that in the desert even much of this
gender syntaxis is collapsed because it does not matter in the desert
whether a person is a man or a woman. Does each desert dweller not have to
take care not to lose too much of the child in "him/her"?
In my mothertongue in the desert they will say: ..... lose
too much of the child in "its"? should I translate it literally into
English. Shall I begin to write persistently like this on the list?
>The English language was shaped by and reflects the values
>of a Eurocentric dominator culture of the past 5,000 years.
Is English really that old? Is Hebrew and Aramic not a little bit older.
What about ancient Chaldean? How many fellow learners can read the Old
English of a thousand years ago? What languges did Old English emerged
from 1600 years ago? How many of you have read Herodutus' second book in
which he documentation of his expeditions to the north east of the fair
haired people who came from over the Caucasian mountains moving further
west. Have anyone compared what he had to say about their values and what
the Roman empire had done to squash them in the Lowlands regions by Pepin
and Charlemagne?
Who do the most to make English the foremost lingua franca of the world --
English people or those who use it for international and global purposes?
>Ergo my reason for posting the Women's Learning piece in
>the first place!
I do care for the learning of men, women, children (who have even not yet
awaken to gender and sex) and even people who do not fit into this scheme.
Here is a test. I have been contributing to this list for many years. I
have written a lot. I have used the word "humankind" a lot and hopefully
the word "mankind" never. But let the counting decides!
Dear Sajeela, it is easy not to push somebody's buttons. Its far more
difficult to push it gently. If the pushing seems to go too heavy, then
rather skip my contributions. What about seeing a movie which bends the
truth so as to push the buttons heavily to make a hit at the box office?
Finally, thank you for your "temperamental" contribution to our
LO-dialogue. I think here of temperament as the harmony between feeling
and thinking. Debasing the complementary duality between man and woman
into a dialectical battle has made this world a horrible place to live in.
Gender sensitivity is something which we cannot avoid in our LO-dialogue.
Gender war is something which we will have to stop.
Yesterday in the last hour of sun I had to make my granddaughter Jessica a
whip. She wanted it to tame lions. Sooner or later she will tell me what
goes on in her little head. She used that whip rather visciously.
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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