Replying to LO25673 --
Dear Organlearners,
Winfired Dressler < KiWiDressler@t-online.de > writes:
>(This is an observation, which I wanted to share
>in the thread 'What is structure'...). I hope this could
>illustrate that the term 'control' in combination with
>'within the system or outside it' catched my special
>attention.
>
>Furthermore I am struggling intensely with the
>relationship between power and service
Greetings Winfried,
This is indeed a complex relationship. For example, delivering service
requires the ability to do work W. To export such work, the system has to
draw on its free energy F, thus lowering it. Hence spontaneous service
without sustainable free energy is dynamically impossible.
A system's free energy can be sustained by releasing some of its entropy
bounded energy needed to maintain its organisation by giving up some of
that organisation. For example, when I walk in the desert for a couple of
days, I take no food along, only water. The free energy which I need for
walking, I get from shedding some of the fat and flesh which I build up
sitting in front of the computer ;-) A system' free energy can also be
sustained by importing sources of free energy. For example, should I go
into the desert for a week or more, I will take some food along as a
source of free energy.
When a system imports free energy as fast as it is used up, then that
system is heading for some catastrophe. It means for the system self that
the system is become overburdened with excess baggage -- entropy obesity I
would call it. It means for the surroundings that another system in that
surroundings has to export this free energy rather than employing it self
to perform a spontaneous service -- entropy famine I would call it.
Perhaps this will give you a grib on
>First, as manager of strategic planing, I certainly
>have a lot of also formal power. On the other hand,
>as a consultant to the managers of our product
>groups, I have to perform my power in a serving
>manner,
The following is your answer to a question which I asked long ago. When a
change in a system becomes necessary, where has the change to be
inititated, in the system or in its surroundings?
>in fact, the better I am able to serve - i.e. let them
>find out self, what otherwise I had to force on them -,
>the greater my power becomes, requiring even more
>careful and responsible serving.
Winfried, the following caught my attention because of the language
involved.
>My dictionary only knows the word steward, and my
>associations were that of a waiter or servant. Puzzled
>by your, Doc, explanation, I checked in a bigger
>dictionary of our secretary and there I found
>'stewardship' translated as 'Verwaltung'. Checking back
>I found 'Verwaltung' translated as 'administration,
>management' (as expected), but no 'stewardship'.
I also thought that "Verwaltung" translated only into the latter
possibilities. I thought that stewardship itself translated into
"Gutsbesitzer" (credit holder, land holder), something which translates
into my mother tongue Afrikaans (as well as Dutch) "rentmeesterskap".
Should I create literal translations for it, it would be in German
"Zinsmeisterschaft" and in English "interestmastership" (a banker).
What strikes me as most peculiar is that the word "Gutsprechen" itself,
also employing the root "gut" (good) has warranty or guarantee as one of
its meanings. Bring this into the field of "stewardship" and "service" and
we see immediately how important the distinction and complementarity
between leadership and stewardship are. Furthermore, stewardship and
service without warranty are fakes. The warranty is not to make promises,
but to live up to such promises even in the face of death self.
>>I do not think the misunderstanding it was intended
>>by Winfried in his response, but I got the impression
>>that somehow the point which I tried to make in my
>>original comment, got deformed.
>
>Your point, At, has fallen on the ground of my context
>(and its degree of formal maturity) and may have reacted
>in a way that it became something else. Now I have
>shared some context and should I really have deformed -
>in the sense of impaired essentiality - your point, I am
>eager to learn how I did so, because then it is likely that
>I do so also in less safe environment than this list.
I think we are back in Leo's topic "Dialogue, language and learning". It
is now clear for me that it was not a case of deforming one another's
thoughts, but rather a case that any one language cannot express our
thoughts perfectly. Perhaps the deep problem is that we use language for
controlling others whereas it was originally intended to enhance both our
stewardship to others and our leadership on ourselves.
Actually, the following is a very curious question: How can I lead myself?
My own answer is rather short -- by regaining all possible control over
myself through authentic learning.
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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