Replying to LO27350 --
Dear Organlearners,
Bill Harris <bill_harris@facilitatedsystems.com> writes:
>Thank you for your heartfelt thoughts. I just
>discovered I had missed this message when it
>first came out. I believe you speak much truth.
Greetings dear Bill,
When anybody thanks any person, even me, for showing compassion, I want to
run away. The reason is that it is sheer horror for me that compassion has
become so scarce that when a person responds to it, it comes as a shock,
especially with the "thank you" attached to it.
Perhaps it is wrong for me to feel like running away an go an live in the
desrt like a hermit, but that is how it is with me. But other qualities of
humaneness like care, kind and gentle which have become scarce too cause
the same feeling within me.
When I saw your "I believe you speak much truth." my first thought was on
Goethe who wrote that truth is for him the relationship between the
"world-inside-me" and the "world-outside-me". The more we let the
"world-inside-me" interact with "world-outside-me" IN A HUMANE MANNER, the
more we will learn the truth.
Most people nowadays think that truth has to do with sureness involving
the true and false dichotomy. I think that it has been a gradual reduction
of truth which began at least two millenia ago. It accelerated
considerably since the awakening of science a little more than three
centuries ago.
Sureness is but one of the 7Es (seven essentialities of creativity).
Sureness is for me not applying LEM (Law of Excluded Middle) left, right,
above, below, front, back and centre. LEM in logic would mean that a
proposition is either true, or false, but neither both true and false nor
none of them. A proposition may be false today, but in tomorow's context
it may have become true.
Wholeness and openness are two other 7Es. These two play an immense role
in Goethe's ariculation that relationship between the "world-inside-me"
and the "world-outside-me" becomes truth. Such wholeness and openness are
notoriously absent in present day enquiries better known as Formal Logic.
>I started following your work when you first began
>expounding on the 7E's years ago, and then I got
>busy with other things and stopped wrestling with
>your longer postings. I've found that I stay busy,
>and yet I still sense there is something important
>about what you're saying more of us should internalize.
>Since I gather your book is not published, are there
>a small set of archived postings or other sources
>which serve as a primer? I realize that serious learning
>takes serious work, but perhaps there's at least a
>Wegweiser, a set of tips to point one along a fruitful path.
Bill, you touch a very sore point for me. I once wrote about the
essentiality otherness (and also openness) which I did not describe
formally -- tell me the colours of a rainbow so that I can also appreciate
its beauty. It is the same for all 7Es. We all have immense tacit
knowledge on them, but as soon as we want to tell them with words, we find
how difficult it is. Yet we each should try to articulate them because
this helps us to keep focus on them.
I find that when people began to speak authentically in the dialogue of
the "world-inside-me" and its relationship to the "world-outside-me", the
sheer guiding power of these 7Es come to light. Although not a single
sentence spoken may articulate even one of the 7Es self, yet almost all of
the sentences need one or more of the 7Es to back them up. In writing the
dialogue it seems as if the 7Es are hovering silently between the lines.
In the beginning of this year I took a resolution to write more on the 7Es
and creativity. So if you want some reading stuff to activate your own
thinking, go to Googles advanced search option at
< http://www.google.com/advanced_search >
Type in the "with all of the words" window the words "7Es creativity" Type
in the "site or domain" window "learning-org.com". The search will open up
the contributions of this year on the LO-dialogue. Your will get some
thirty hits. I have become lazy and began to refer to them by 7Es. But do
not type in only "7Es" because then you will get thousands of the wierdest
hits.
To get all the LO-dialogues on the essentialities over the years, type in
"essentialities creativity" in the top window. This will afford some 200
hits.
Do not try to type in the "with the exact phrase" window "seven
essentialities creativity". Somehow this requires too much of the
artificial intelligence of Google. Similarly, using the list "liveness
sureness wholeness fruitfulness spareness otherness openness" in the top
window gives only twenty hits.
I think you may find food for thought in
"Improving Creativity with the 7Es LO26989"
< www.learning-org.com/01.07/subject.html >
"Freedom, Peace and the 7Es LO27105"
< www.learning-org.com/01.08/0020.html >
"Deep Wholeness in Learning LO27143"
< www.learning-org.com/01.08/0058.html >
>Skipping much of importance in your comments,
>I'll comment on your suggestion that we live outside
>the USA for at least a year. I've done that, albeit
>still in a Western country, and I learned much about
>me and about the USA as well as about that country
>and its peoples from the experience.
Well, there was a time several centuries ago in the Saxon region of the
Lowlands in Northern Europe (beween the Ijsel river in Holland and Rhein
river in Germany) when some of the universities there required documentary
proof that a graduate student had traveled another part of the world for
at least a year before the degree was awarded. I wonder if there is any
university today which has this rule. I think it will take guts and sheer
Systems Thinking to introduce this rule again.
>We need to hear others' views, even if they make
>us uncomfortable (assuming that makes us think),
>and we need to form relationships with others across
>cultural and country boundaries, even those with
>whom we might not agree.
Yes, this is what the 7Es are about, especially openness. Yes, openness
is the one which makes us most uncomfortable.
>So, yes, we in the USA need support for the
>shock we've experienced, shock which may
>unfortunately be all too real in many parts of the
>world, and we also need the exchange of thoughts
>and insights honestly and clearly and in ways
>designed to foster understanding.
We here in South Africa lived by the grace of God. The leaders of
apartheid used to claim that we have to fight the terrorists against
apartheid because they are communists. It was a sort of red herring which
they used to keep the voters from the real issue -- fragmented wholeness.
So when the Berlin Wall came down and soon afterwards the Soviet, their
very reason for fighting the terrorists vanished. Since they were not
clever enough to anticipate the future (because of a lack of wholness ;-)
and thus to prepare in advance a new red herring, they just had to give up
on their ideology.
Please do not get mad at me for making the following observation which is
not intended as a judgement. South Africans were leaded by their noses
into great tribulations because of an ideology which impaired wholeness
seriously. I cannot observe that Americans are following any specific
ideology, not even capitalism, but I do observe how many of them are lead
by their noses into great tribulations because of seriously impaired
openness.
The lack of openness among most opinion formers in your public media (and
thus the experts who they draw in to help with forming opinions) often
shocks me. Perhaps I am completely wrong in my observation so that I beg
your pardon. But so then too the many other people in contact with me who
also articulate this lack of openness in their own manner (not my 7Es
style). We all are very worried that the Americans are not aware how
percarious the "American way of living" has become through a lack of
openness.
Your economy is so strong that you import every expert which you need. We
have a saying in my mother tongue something like "Whom's bread you eat,
whom's words you speak". What I mean by this that you import experts when
needed rather than knowing that the lack in one of the 7Es causes a lack
in cultivating such experts self. What you cannot imagine, is that by
importing these experts you close yourself in between the two oceans to
create your own living world isolated from the rest of the world.
Perhaps it is your very "making us uncomfortable" which is responsible for
it. The word "comfort" comes from the Latin "con-"=with + "fortis"=strong.
Every time when a US leader say "we are a strong nation" my heart winces.
It is exactly what our leaders often said here during apartheid to keep
their voters going -- "We are strong and we will show the terrorists just
how strong we are. We are not going to give up our comforts just for a
bunch of terrorists against apartheid."
We may have been military-wise strong. But during the hearings of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission we learned to our deepest shame just
how much we were spiritual weaklings.
And the weel is turning very fast for many people who suddenly gets into
material riches. Some former poor "terrorists against apartheid" who now
earns big money as senior government officials are already using the words
"We are strong and we will not negotiate with extremists" and following
these words up with like deeds. Again it makes me wince.
>Thanks,
"De nada" -- of nothing -- as I have learned in South America.
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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