Replying to LO26029 --
> Don't organizations get "graded" all the time as reflected in the value of
> their stock or their sales or their ability to attract clients/customers
> and provide service? If they haven't "learned" something in their
> organizational lifetime, they're not likely to have survived, are they?
Seems to me there's something wrong with that formulation. Perhaps it's
simply the idea that all things learned are good things, which isn't
necessarily true. Learned helplessness, for instance, springs to mind.
Many types of organizations survive--even grow--without learning towards
health. Thus, physical and mental abuse can be passed down from one
generation to the next quite efficiently--might even prove the undoing of
an organization to end that cycle, which is one pretty good argument for
seeing death as a potential birth of healthy learning (so much of which
entails unlearning) rather that its inevitable end. It's certainly
possible for all sorts of negatives or evils to thrive: certain malignant
tumors even look quite lovely from a microscopic viewpoint, and there's
something compelling about the ability of a virus to evolve ever so
subtly, dodging our immune systems and drugs in its push to survive.
Learning isn't inherently good.
Kathy A. Fitch
Assistant Professor of English
http://www.kafkaz.net/kfitch
College of DuPage
Glen Ellyn, IL
--"Kathy Fitch" <kfitch@kafkaz.net>
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