Replying to LO26890 --
Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Dressler < Winfried.Dressler@Voith.com > writes:
>Is there any hope for a vampire to become human again?
[Host's Note: Hmm... Sometimes our dialog seems to drift a bit from
organizational learning... Then, it usually drifts back. ..Rick]
Greeting dear Winfried,
I will not try to answer your question. Nevertheless, I think it is one of
the most important questions we will have to answer in future.
I will rather try to paint a picture in which each of us can place your
question. Perhaps this picture will help us to understand your question. I
have a dear lady (M) in mind who I think also struggles with this
question. She asks many questions, but between them stands this tacit
question which she does not ask. I will send her a copy of this picture.
Let us firstly discuss the vampire belief of mythology.
Let us begin some six millennia ago. It seems to have been a general
belief among ancient civilisations that the blood of animals was sacred
(or taboo). Blood contained the "living force" (or gave rise to deadly
diseases). Thus the drinking of blood or eating of meat still containing
blood was prohibited. Let us now jump some four of those millennia to the
ancient belief in the "wampir" of the Slavic countries.
When certain people died, they became vampires. Their souls would not
leave their bodies. When any animal would move (like a walking cat or a
flying bird) over the grave of a vampire, the vampire's soul would enter
this animal. The animal would then seek and suck blood from a sleeping
human. Afterwards the animal would return to the grave, press itself
against the grave and let the soul transfuse the blood to the corpse.
Hence the body of the vampire stayed rosy rather than rotting away. Some
vampires could even leave their graves at night to function like ordinary
humans, but had to return to the grave before sunrise. To kill a vampire
for good, a wooden stake had to be driven through the heart of the corpse.
This would release the soul from the body.
Which people became vampires? We might think that it would be only
sorcerers and witches. However, any person cursed by any organisation
(family, church or civil council) of society would become a vampire when
dying under the spell of that curse. The duration of the curse can be very
long. Even a child may be cursed so that when dying at old age it will
still become a vampire if that curse was not removed. Also, any person who
was murdered, could also become a vampire.
After the colonialisation of South America, two species of bats were found
which actually sucked blood from larger animals like horses, cattle and
even humans. When this information reached the Slavic countries, bats soon
took over the job of sucking blood for the vampire, even though there are
no blood sucking bats in Eurasia. Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula
ensured that this belief will remain through the entire world.
Here in Southern Africa a similar belief is found among some of its
peoples. The same kind of persons (spelled by magic, cursed and murdered)
is involved. But here the blood sucker is thought to be a snake of any
kind. Often this snake would not even suck blood, but also milk from any
lactating mammal, especially human mothers. Thus these peoples have an
immense fear of snakes. They also cremate a corpse whenever suspecting a
distressed soul was involved.
These beliefs show that people recognise in blood (and milk) a "living
force" which enabled the deceased to keep on doing things rather than
rotting away as it should have happened. Since the blood of the deceased
self could not function any more, blood from sleeping healthy persons were
needed. Hence the victims were unaware of such usurping of the "living
force". These beliefs also show that primarily the soul of the deceased
was put into distress so that it could not leave the body as is normal.
That is why the body had to be kept alive.
Let us now leave mythology and think about science.
Can we identify this "living force" in the blood of mammals? A number of
scientists participated in the discovery of LEC (Law of Energy
Conservation) during the 1850s. One of them was the medical doctor Mayer.
One of his contributions was to observe that people who had to live under
conditions causing a deficiency of oxygen, had much redder blood than
normal people. From this he inferred that their blood had to adapt so as
to release still sufficient energy when oxidising carbohydrates. In other
words, the blood had to provide for the release of energy needed for
living.
The belief in vampires seems to be a mythological articulation of the
potential which blood has to release energy. When we remember that already
two centuries before the discovery of LEC, Leibnitz called Newton's force
of mechanics a "dead force" and his own extension of it a "living force",
thoughts indeed seem to take shape. Physicists now use his extension to
define work (a form of energy) as force multiplied by distance. But since
work is a form of energy, what is that which blood releases: energy as a
whole, work, some other form of energy or even a unique manifestation of
all the energy? Let us seek the answer.
Some dozen years after LEC, the Law of Entropy Production (LEP) was also
discovered. In those days it was thought that LEP merely determined the
flow of heat from a higher temperature to a lower temperature. Temperature
is the intensive factor of thermal energy. Each form of energy has an
intensive and an extensive factor. It took another fifty years before some
scientists began to understand that LEP is also responsible for the
displacement of any other form of energy from a higher value to a lower
value of its intensive factor. They also began to understand that LEP is
even responsible for the conversion of one form of energy to other forms
of energy.
However, science became increasingly fragmented into an armada of subjects
with many disciplines in each. The more scientists began to specialise on
a tiny spot of the picture, the less they were able to navigate the whole
picture. Hence few scientists are presently able to navigate the
correspondence between the observable organisation of any system and the
actual forms of energy within that system. As the organisation (structures
and processes) of the system changes, the arrangement of these forms of
energy also changes and vice versa. This arrangement is dynamical because
the forms of energy may be converted to one another and also be displaced
to other parts of the system.
What scientists with disciplinary thinking understand even less, is that
the entropy S of a system is a measure of its entire organisation
(structures and processes as well as order and chaos). This means that
when the organisation of the system changes, its entropy S will also have
to change. In other words, when the entropy S of a system increases or
decreases, its organisation will increase or decrease in the same
direction. Hence it is impossible for a system to increase in organisation
while its entropy stays the same or even decreases.
So how is this entropy S of a system and the total energy E of all its
forms of energy related to each other? The entropy S tells us that some of
the total energy E is locked up in maintaining the present organisation of
the system. Only the remainder of the total energy E can be used to change
for the future the organisation and thus entropy S of the system. This
remainder is called the "free energy" (two words, one concept) F of the
system.
How is the "free energy" F related to each form of energy? Each form of
energy may be distinguished into a potential part and a kinetic part. The
kinetic part is involved with the present organisation of the system. This
means that the potential part is available for the future organisation of
the system. Hence the "free energy" F is the whole of the potential parts
of all the forms of energy. In other words, the "free energy" F is a
holistic concept like the total energy E and the entropy S.
How willing are we to increase the wholeness of the total energy E, the
entropy S and the "free energy" F? Creation has many complementary duals.
An extraordinary dual is its physical and spiritual complements. The E, S
and F described above refer to the physical complement of Creation. But is
it not possible that they also refer to its spiritual complement? Should
we speculate that it is possible, how will we verify that it is indeed the
case? If the case, is spiritual "free energy" not most important for
changing mental organisation?
The two main functions of blood in mammals are to feed and to clean every
part of the body. When feeding, it transports substances high in free
energy (like oxygen, glucose and amino acids) to all body parts where they
will react catabolic or anabolic. It is the "free energy" F which these
substances share which allows them to react, thus lowering the "free
energy" among the compounds which they form. But they do not react in the
blood self because they need complex enzymes (catalysts) to do so which
are absent from blood. When they react catabolic, they form simpler
compounds with less entropy and heat carrying the extra entropy away. Thus
the "free energy" can be used to drive any process like contracting a
muscle. When they react anabolic, they become more complex compounds with
higher entropy like building up the protein tissue (cells) of a muscle.
Now let us go back to the vampire mythology. What a "free energy vampire"
does, is to usurp the "free energy" in the blood of the victim for its own
purposes. What is its own purpose? To use that "free energy" so as to
produce self entropy and thus change its own organisation. This leaves the
victim without such "free energy" and hence the means to organise self
further. The soul of the vampire has become so distorted by magic or
distressed by curse that it lost the ability to manage self its "free
energy" household. Thus the vampire as master needs many unwary slaves to
supply it with "free energy". Without these slaves, the vampire's corpse
will rot away because it cannot manage its own "free energy" like the
slaves.
Vampires may be a mythology. But for me this story articulates
metaphorically how people became gradually aware that they have to supply
other people with "free energy". The vampire may enslave them physically
and/or spiritually. An example of the spiritual vampire is a person always
picking arguments with others persons. Another example is a vampire always
making mental demands from others. In all such examples the victim feels
inert afterwards. By giving such examples I know that I am close to being
judgemental in my observations. But such observations and never judgements
are necessary to free myself from any spiritual "free energy vampire". It
is one thing to feel inert or listless after an encounter with somebody
else. It is another thing to know how and why it happened so as to prevent
it.
When I think of modern civilisation with its technology and how it has
become immensely dependant on fossil fuel as a source of "free energy", I
cannot help but to think also of modern humankind as a "free energy
vampire" of nature. The rest of all living species seems to be unaware of
what humankind is doing. Although humankind feeds upon fossil fuel (the
past organisation of nature) much more than on the other living species
acting as its slaves, it dumps the left overs on nature. This pollution is
causing increasingly calamities in nature which affect all living species,
including humankind.
When I think of blood, I have to think of its dual function -- to feed and
to clean. Knowledge also has this dual function. Perhaps we feed ourselves
too much with information coming from the knowledge of others and clean
ourselves too little with knowledge. Perhaps we need to clean our minds
without involving judgements. How? Love also has this dual function of
feeding and cleaning. Since love is the law of perfect freedom, it will
teach us how to clean without judgement like blood also do.
I am part of this humankind polluting the world, although I sincerely wish
that I was not also causing the pollution. Yet I had to drive yesterday
along a highway from Pretoria to Johannesburg to be examined by an old
physician still working holistically. I did it because my health is
important to me. Thousands of others were on the highway too, each going
to a destination important for them. I wondered how many travellers know
that this excessive use of fossil fuel cannot go on indefinitely. There is
such a thing as spareness and even fossil fuels with their "free energy"
cannot escape this essentiality of creativity. There is also wholeness
such that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. We each, doing what
is important to us, is a part of humankind. Humankind is a whole which
also has to do what is important to it.
Wholeness is another of the seven essentialities of creativity (7Es). In
this picture above I tried to paint a holistic scene involving science and
mythology. Scientists may want to burn me on the stakes for connecting
(the essentiality fruitfulness) science to mythology. Mythologists may
want to burn me on the stakes by removing the mystical barriers of
believes (the essentiality openness). However, my soul needs to be
liberated from this "free energy vampire" which we call modern
technological civilisation. I do acknowledge that this very civilisation
enabled me to wander in pristine deserts. But these deserts taught me
through many experiences that I will have to change -- to accept the
inevitable of "free energy" and the 7Es -- to stop living as a "free
energy vampire".
What about systems lesser than the organisation of humankind itself? What
about nations and international corporations? What about schools, churches
and our workplaces as organised systems. Is it possible to identify when
such a system may easily become a "free energy vampire"? Yes, to suck up
the "free energy" of those members who have enough of it, the system self
must be low in "free energy" F. This will be the case when most of its
total energy E is locked up in maintaining the present entropy S measuring
the organisation of that system. Think of slogans such as "Keep this and
that of the organisation as they are", "This red tape is not baggage, but
sacred tradition" and "We first have to look after ourselves before we can
serve the public". When the majority members of the system do not know the
slightest why these slogans have to be adhered to, the system is close to
becoming a "free energy vampire".
Such a system will become a free energy vampire when "its distressed soul
has to leave the body, but cannot". What does it mean? Almost everyone in
the system is unhappy because of all the magic, curses and character
assassinations taking place. Eventually the rigid system has to make a
drastic change in organisation to survive in an environment which has
gradually become more complex. Thus it needs much "free energy" to produce
much entropy to sustain this drastic change which we may call an
organisation paradigm shift.
This "free energy" could have been obtained by letting the system's
organisational baggage collapse creatively, thus making more of its total
energy free. But the system does not follow this path of reformation. It
rather makes increasing demands on its members, sucking up so much of
their "free energy" that they eventually land in jails, hospitals, asylums
and mortuaries. The system loses its tacit knowledge of the dual function
of blood. It focus exclusively on the feeding function. It forgets about
the cleaning function, substituting it with harsh judgements, unfounded
criticisms and excessive penalties. These things can never clean since
they are the toxic excretions of its destructive creativity. The cleaning
function of blood is to take away these toxins.
It is bitterly cold here in Pretoria. I woke up during night. No stars
were shining because of mist (very unusual to Pretoria in winter). But
after midday the sun is finally dissolving the mist of inequity. The sun
is calling to me: "Stop writing to learning.com and come out to be
revitalised by my free energy". So I will leave you fellow learners to
have a stroll in the sun, the primary source of all "free energy" on
Mother Earth.
Dear Winfried (and M), although I painted a picture above, I cannot answer
your question. I am self too much of a "free energy vampire" and I feel
deeply sad about it. I wish I had the spiritual free energy to undo it
all, but how can a part act as the whole? Now to feel the sun! Please
forgive me.
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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