Replying to A Story about Paper LO25317
Dedicated to "Alex" and his mum;-)
>Greetings Andrew,
>Thank you for telling us about the plight of May. She does need money, but
>even without money she will keep on going, doing whatever is in her power.
>The "professional benefactors" do have the money, but without it they
>will stop doing anything.
SNIP
>Tell her that the vast majority of us still have to catch up very much on
>her walking the talk.
>With care and best wishes
>At de Lange
Dear At and dear learners,
Thank you At for your deeply knowledgeable, encouraging and wise message ,
I will be passing everything on directly.
Yes, in every picture of her working there her face is pointed toward the
children and their work and not the camera.
Yes, in every picture of her working the children's faces are beaming 'light'
as flickering candles in a 'dark wood'.
Yes, in every picture of her working a child is leaning into her whole body.
[Later this week the scientific community produces a report that may well
show that such 'professional benefactors' set the bridge for AIDS to jump
from one species to another because they used unethically and without
anyone's foreknowledge the pancreases of chimps in making drugs then
tested them on black Africans. People in supposed LO's in supposed
democracies spend million os so called guru's to defeat the problem of
unmentionables via double loop learning, which is what, a euphemism for
plain speaking? And I sit here wondering if Rick will feel able to allow
this paragraph to stand, while in Africa and all over the world we are
dying. BIG Mmmm.] --I put it in brackets to protect it...
People in the science and LO interface like to quote Einstein, so here as
story that is 'connecting' by Alan Lightman ;-) (look, I just get to write
this stuff as it emerges from someplace unknown;-) that was referenced to
his book "Einstein's Dreams" and maybe to some of the dreams that seem to
float around the LO world hither and yon.
The speculation falls upon the nature of immortality's effect upon society.
It seems that society would fall into two types, the 'procrastinators' who
lack all and any urgency, there is time for everything and there are those
who become 'manically hyperactive' seeing the potential to do everything. But
something is waiting in the wings isn't it? Do you sense it? Have you ever
experienced it? The 'dead hand'. It stopped all projects, large and small
alike, paralysing all. What was it? It was the voice of 'experience' AKA
"Been there, seen that, dunnit". When every man's father, his father and his
father is on hand then "there is no end to the hierarchy of consultation"
Prof. Barrow, Cambridge University.
No end to the 'diversity of alternatives'. So it was that with "time to spare
(like money?) time may not have spared them." SOUND FAMILIAR.
And, you know At, for all the prestige of the people I 'virtually' meet,
here and elsewhere, attempting to cultivate seeing it as a more and more a
developing whole, and increasingly clearly out of the mists of complexity
I see that 'buzzy' inertia overcoming entire organisations, economies,
nations. While one part, the by far greater part turns into emaciated
stick like figures and I see the much smaller part, bloated by wealth and
self interests, myopia, mental diseases of depression and eating disorders
growing among their very own children, (tenfold increase in children
referred to clinicians for mental health problems in the last decade as a
result of failing cohesion in education and the home) while narcotic and
leisure (sic) drugs are running through the veins of entire communities,
'stockbrokers' and 'drop outs' alike.
Let me own up to something. People like May frighten the living **** out
of me.
Fromm identified five types of character within society and culture each and
among them any society permits flex.
The Receptive character, wants to be taken care of, having great fondness for
food and drink. The Exploitative character, wants to satisfy his desires by
cunning, greed, aggression. The Hoarding character, likes to keep what he/she
has, orderly, punctual but myopic. The Marketing character, adapting
him/herself and selling him/herself to others, Fromm said," these people
treat personalities like commodities to be bought and sold like bales of
hay." Then, as if for relief he identifies the Productive character, The
"normal" person, capable of 'genuine' love attachments to others,
demonstrating ..."man's ability to use his powers and to realise the
potentialities inherent in him/her."
Importantly Fromm locks self-love and love for others. Respect comes with it,
for free!!! This genuine love implies, "care, respect, responsibility and
knowledge." Not an affect(ation) but, "-an active striving for growth and
happiness of the loved person rooted in ones own capacity to love."
Relevance here to the LO digest?
"I've always found a really useful definition of knowledge to be -The
capacity for effective action .....learning is the enhancement of that
capacity - areas of significance are often found far off from the symptoms
of problems - leverage may lie in very distant parts -- Creation, or
bringing something new into being, is always a product of human
communities. I would say the closest and simplest word that comes to mind
is love."
In following on those comments Larry Prusak of IBM said," You know,
Peter's exactly right, Geurnica is a message."
Well this was a message, May is a message.
Here is one wake up call for all.
"American commercial society tends to TAKE things and TURN them into
something I can SELL you on a DISK. ALL the CONSULTING firms I know sell
SOMETHING called Packaged Enabled Business Transformation something MAKES NO
SENSE WHATSOEVER if you look at the words, but they're making BILLIONS of
dollars on this."
Larry Prusak, managing principal in the ibm consulting group, Director of its
Knowledge Management Institute and Editor of "Knowledge in Organizations".
I was driving through Oxford last week and I passed a large Victorian villa
and outside it PROCLAIMED
'The University of Georgia at Oxford'
There may be no end to that ingenuity. I say, pray that there is.
It will fail soon enough.
Well, I ask you, what are we building here and where is "here" to and for
you today?
Love,
Andrew
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