metanoia organizations LO25098

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 07/24/00


Replying to LO25089 --

Dear Organlearners,

Gerrit Visser <gervis@home.nl> writes:

>On a lovely sunny morning Jan, Judy and I met and talked
>about the involvement and participation in this list. In that
>conversation I commented on Rick's initiative to encourage
>lurkers to participate in the discussions. Confiding my hesitations
>to post Judy emphasized to me the openness in this group
>and gave me some good reasons to dare.

Greetings Gerrit,

Thank you very much again for touching on this very important topic.

Why do people lurk on the list?
* There are some who do not have enough time, either to write
   or even to read most of the contributions.
* There are some who wait patiently for a contribution once in a
   while in their field of expertise.
* There are some who enjoy learning so much that they forget
   giving something back.
* There are some who do not want and do not like to participate
   in public discussions of any kind.
* There are some who spend their time and effort in journals
  refereed by peers so as to improve on their own CV.
* Their are those who need to sell what they know rather than
  wanting to give away freely and still maintain a living.
* There are others who desire to participate, but for some or
   other reason they keep on hesistating to do so. Possible
   reasons are:
(1) They doubt that
    ** their contributions will be of value
    ** their contribution will be in order
    ** they might avoid heated arguments
    ** their ideas will be considered sane
    ** their thoughts will be interpreted correctly
    ** they will be accepted as bona vide learners
    ** they will be excused by their employers
(2) They cannot express themselves because
    ** they have not had sufficient experience in dialogue
    ** they suspect that they will leave out something vital
    ** English is not their mother tongue
    ** they talk and read too much while writing too little
    ** they have not yet learned that recognising their own tacit
       knowledge in somebody else's writing is still not the same
       as expressing that tacit knowledge self in order to evolve.

I am sure that fellow learners can add to the list above. As for the last
section of fellow learners who want to participate, but hesitate to do so,
I consider them as most important to our LO-dialogue. They are vital to
the emergence of our LO-dialogue into perhaps the first ever cyber-space
LO.

I have arranged the reasons in two groups. The first group of reasons have
to do with what I consider as the dynamics of creativity while the second
group concerns the mechanics of creativity. In other words, both groups of
reasons point to the creativity of somebody (that of the lurkers and/or
that of writers) being a constraint to the LO-dialogue. Since this last
sentence is negative, let me formulate it more positively. Those lurkers
who want to participate, but hesistate to do so, need to learn more about
creativity and how to care for it.

>ok Judy instead of raising a 'person-to-person'-question let
>me post this here and we'll see what happens. This is what
>I wanted to ask since a long time. Reading Peter Senge's
>Fifth Discipline I have always questioned the explanation of
>the word 'metanoia' as 'changing spirits' . Due to my christian
>background I have always felt that the impact of the word
>metanoia goes far beyond the limited explanation as a change
>of spirit.
>
>Who can give me a more indepth understanding of what
>Metanoia Organizations really are. Is it empowering people?
>Is it getting aligned with company goals? Is it collective
>awareness? Is it shared values? Instead of sending this
>question only to Judy I accept her invitation and post it in here
>to learn what others say about this.

Gerrit, I will give my own view point. If it is good, it may become a text
book answer. That is not good enough for me. It will be much better for me
when it helps others to create their own sensible view point so that we
can establish a common understanding.

Let us first think of the word "paranoia". It comes from the Greek
"para"=beside/beyond and "noeo"=think. It is a word used by psychologists
to indicate thinking patterns which are psychotic, i.e. paranoia are
delusions which prevent "normal" thinking patterns. We can think of
different kinds of delusions like depressed, erotic, grandiose,
hallucinative, litigious, persecutory and schizophreny. The word
"paranoia" was perhaps first created by Hooper in 1811 in his medical
lexicon where it was considered as disordered thinking. Hence any
"disordered" thinking became frowned upon, thus severing the link between
chaos and order.

The "normal" thinking patterns may then be called in the same manner
"orthonoia". I have just now created the word "orthonoia" in English so
that pehaps it might come into common use. I did by making use of the
Greek "ortho"=normal/direct/close. I did it to give an idea what
"metanoia" means. In the Greek the "meta"=between/after/over/with/changed.
In other words, whereas "paranoia" prevent "orthonoia", "metanoia" promote
"orthonoia".

Who created the word "metanoia". Perhaps Senge did it to articulate his
own tacit knowledge. However, the word has been used occasionaly in
English the past century, but far less than the word "paranoia" and
obviously more than the word "orthonoia".

It is most interesting for me as a christian that the word "metanoia" has
been used almost 2000 years ago by John the Babtist and often by Jesus of
Nazareth (eg Mat 3:2, Luk 15:10). Luke also uses it a number of times in
Acts. Paul uses it once in 2Col 12:21 and John uses it several times in
Revelations like Rev 2:5, 3:19, 16:9. It all these cases the word got
translated persistently by "repent" or "repentance". However, as my own
understanding in ordinate bifurcations (leading to either constructive
emergences or destructive immergences developed) the more I have become
aware that many of the translations of "metanoia" in the NT could also
have been to "spiritual awakening" rather than a penitative manner.

This shows how important it is to bear Mental Models in mind when
translating something into another language. In the Vulgate translation of
the NT from Greek to Latin by Hieronymus some millenium and a half ago,
the "repent" got the upper hand because of the disintegration of the Roman
empire. The same happened during the Reformation (Luther, King James and
Statenvertaling translations) when the Holy Roman empire began to
disintegrate. Now we christians have inherited the Mental Model that
"metanoia" means only "repentance" rather than also "spiritual
awakening".

After some years of contributing to our LO-dialogue, some fellow learners
should be aware by now that in order to promote my "deep creativity", I
often think transdisciplinary rather than interdisciplinary or
disciplinary. In other words, I move freely from any discipline to any
other discipline in order to follow creative patterns in the whole of
reality. The same had been the case with "orthonoia", "metanoia" and
"paranoia". The words "ortho", "meta" and "para" have a special and
profound significance for understanding organic chemistry.

In organic chemistry the focus is on compounds which contain the element
carbon -- the so-called organic compounds. Organic compounds also contain
other elements like hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphor. Inorganic
compounds do not contain the element carbon, except the couple of dozen of
simple carbonates. The organic compounds (all containing carbon)
outnumber the inorganic compunds by roughly ten to one, although much more
stable elements (81-1)=80 are available to form inorganic compounds.

The organic compounds can be open ended (chain like) in which case they
are called aliphatic. They can also be in one or more closed loops in
which they are called cyclic. A special case for the cyclic compounds
exist, namely the aromatic compounds. They have a much stronger smell
than aliphatic compounds. What happens in an aromatic compound, is that
the cyclic structure gets stabalised by an internal resonance of some
extra electrons called the aromatic electrons. Consider cyclo-hexane C6H12
and benseen C6H6. Both have a hexagonal structure because 6 (hexa) carbon
atoms C have bonded to form a closed loop. But in the emergence of benzene
C6H6 from C6H12, six hydrogen atoms were given off to regain the 6
electrons ("pi" electrons) needed for the aromatic resonance. In other
words, what we have here is another magnificent example of a creative
collapse.

Now let us look at a diagram of the hexagonal structure of benzene.
I suppress the one H atom bonded to each C atom and standing
away from the ring structure. The carbon atoms are numbered in a
manner conventional to chemists.
. (1)
. C
. / \\
. C C (2 - ortho)
. || |
. C C (3 - meta)
. \ //
. C (4 - para)

Electron rich compounds are usualy very reactive (bases or reducers). But
in benzene the extra 6 "pi" electrons (indicated by the 3 pairs of double
strokes, each stroke indicating a pair of electrons) are unusually
unreactive because of internal stabalising through aromatic resonance
(internal homeostatic feedback).

To make an effective collision (see fruitfulness), the benzene ring, rich
in "pi" electrons, must be attacked by a very, very strong electron
seeking species like NO2+ . The position where NO2+ has attacked and
hooked itself onto the ring is called the number (1) carbon atom. In the
case of NO2+ the result will be nitro-benzene with structure
. NO2
. |
. C (1)
. / \\
. C C (2 - ortho) #
. || |
. C C (3 - meta)
. \ //
. C (4 - para) #

Now a most curious thing happens. Positions 2 (ortho) and 4 (para) becomes
activated by the initiating electron seeking group (like NO2) while
position 3 (meta) becomes deactivated even less than in the original pure
benzene structure! This may give an indication how the mind works -- upon
the first reaction the mind is immediately activated for "ortho" (normal)
and "para" (abnormal) thinking. This is indicated by the # sign. To
activate the "meta" (awakening) thinking, the positions (2) and (4) must
be deactivated and the position (3) activated. This is accomplished by
substituting the electron seeking group NO2 with a COMPLEMENTARY DUAL,
namely an electron donating group like CH3. The result is
. CH3
. |
. C (1)
. / \\
. C C (2 - ortho)
. || |
. C C (3 - meta) #
. \ //
. C (4 - para)

In other words, complementary duals (rather than dialectical duals) play
an extremely important role in changing the internal activity of any
system. Few chemists have a deep enough knowledge of physics and
mathematics to go through the quantum mechanical calculations to see that
this very behaviour of the aromatic compounds are already contained at the
quantum mechanical level. They lack this "deep knowledge" because nobody
has told them how important transdiciplinary thinking is. As for me,
transdisciplinary thinking often gives me the "goose flesh", pointing out
what a profoundly consistent coherency there seems to be at the implicit
level of reality.

The teachings of Jesus points to his incredible understanding of duality,
complementary and dialectic. I would say with piety that he teaches "put
me in position (1) and experience how your (2)-(4) or orto-para reactivity
becames (3) or meta activity too".

It is this very consistent coherency at the implicit level of reality
which allows me to think in terms of aromatic reactivity as a model for
metanoic organisations. It tells me that a metanoic organisation knows
where to make initially the change (in this case internally) so that all
subsequent changes become changes sought rather than forced. A metanoic
organisation therefor will be for me an organisation which is able to let
its full creative potential be manifested in a constructive sense. It is
an organisation which not only deals in Knowledge Management, but an
organisation which promotes all the rest of the spiritual orders, lower
ones like creativity and higher once like believing and caring love. It is
an organisation commited to the spiritual awakening of each of its
members. It is an organisation which freely gives away its spiritual
awakenings rather than making them banal once again by selling them as
"intelectual property" because they know where to make the change which
ultimately will count.

I wish I could go on with this topic of aromatic resonance because it is
vital to the functioning of the so called base pairs of the DNA molecule!
Without it there would not be such a thing as chemical based inheritance.
Genetics would have been impossible. But somewhere I have to stop going on
and on and on with this transdiciplinary thinking.

Gerrit, you ask:

>Is it empowering people? Is it getting aligned with company
>goals? Is it collective awareness? Is it shared values?

I will rather not answer each of these questions because of having to deal
with all the confusion in the complexity of each. I would in conclusion
say that a metanoic organisation is one which promotes the constructive
creativity and avoids destructive creativity in every human which it has
to deal with, its own members, its clients, the rest of society and even
the rest of Creation which it is connected with. One of its emerging
metanoia is the very awareness of this web, that reality is one despite
all the futile framentations of humans for selfish purposes.

>Judy and Jan, thanks for inviting me that day. I greatly enjoyed
>our LO discussion 'in real-live'.

I wish I was the fly on the wall, carefully observing your "coffee
meeting", smelling the AROMA of coffee and spirit.

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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