Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
Part 1. Introduction to "one-to-many-mappings".
I dedicate this series of essays to all potential leaders who contemplate
what leadership is about. Many of them are becoming aware that judging
present leaders neither improves the current situation nor helps them to
contemplate leadership. I have had private correspondences with a few such
potential leaders and what they wanted to know makes me excited about the
future.
Before WWII few books and papers had been written on creativity or
leadership. The common mental model (mind set) was that few persons were
gifted with creativity or leadership. But since WWII books and papers on
these topics appeared exponentially. Some stressed that creativity or
leadership could be learned.
The last couple of decades literature began to assert a relationship
between creativity and leadership. But literature also began to appear on
complexity. A central theme is that complexity is the result of
spontaneous organisation. It is in this context of complexity that we will
have to understand creativity and leadership.
Understanding comes through learning. But have we questioned what kind of
learning is needed to cope with creativity, leadership and complexity?
Since WWII an increasing body of literature began to appear proposing
innovations to learning. However, most of these innovations involved
external support systems rather than to cope with complexity through
learning self.
I want to share with you fellow learners my own understanding of
creativity and leadership in the context of complexity. I hope that by
questioning this understanding your own understanding of creativity,
leadership and complexity will increase. My passion is to teach students
how to learn authentically self so that they can free themselves from the
bondage and poverty of ignorance. Forgive me for being so arrogant by
calling such teaching "teachership", but I need to name this concept.
The art of teachership involves "one-to-many-mappings". I will use this
"one-to-many-mapping" to steer the following course through a very rich
picture:
Part 1. Introduction to "one-to-many-mappings".
Part 2. Creativity is a "one-to-many-mapping".
Part 3. Leadership is a "one-to-many-mapping".
Part 4. Inner complex movies as "one-to-many-mappings".
Part 5. Leadership into complexity.
Part 6. Blending leadership with personality.
Part 7. Leadership, free energy and entropy production.
I decided to add the following comment in the finishing stage. While
writing this entire essay, I was deeply under the impression of the
profound correspondences between teachership and leadership. A teacher
with teachership becomes like a leader while a leader with leadership
becomes like a teacher. A teacher with teachership empowers students with
teachership while a leader with leadership empowers followers with
leadership. Teachership and leadership are like the stick carried while
running and handed over to the next runner in an endless relay race from
generation to generation.
Socrates was a teacher with profound teachership. He called it midwifery
-- the art of helping a student to let noble thoughts get born until the
student can do such midwifery self. Socrates was deeply aware that noble
thoughts get born within the mind rather than being imported from the
outside as information. These noble thoughts are the kernels with which
the student's knowledge advances in steps. The authentic learner knows how
to take each step. Such an authentic learner may become a teacher with
teachership or a leader with leadership.
Teachers with teachership know that most humans can learn how to let many
noble thoughts get born within themselves so as to advance in knowledge.
But far less humans have actually succeeded in doing it. Why? Most humans
with knowledge express some of their inner knowledge as outer information
so that it can be communicated. This knowledge which lives within the mind
and the information which exists outside the mind can never be the same
thing. Yet they get easily confused.
When this confusion happens, rote learning begins. The student tries to
memorise outer information as inner "noble thoughts". Thereafter the
student tries to find applications for these apparent "noble thoughts".
Once an application for a "noble thought" had been found and successfully
worked through, the student might exclaim: "What a noble thought!" When
this happens, a noble thought has indeed been born. But it was not born
because of the memorisation and subsequent search for an application. It
was born because of the actual creating during the application. To learn
is to create.
Teachers with teachership know that noble thoughts live as long as the
human lives. These noble thoughts live together as one living knowledge.
However, memorised information from without are soon forgotten. And those
fragments of information still remembered are like the scrambled pieces of
a jigsaw puzzle. There is often conflict between these fragments of
information and the one living knowledge. For the rote learner this
conflict is an endless losing battle. However, the authentic learner
immediately questions with his/her living knowledge every new fragment of
information coming into the mind. This questioning may become an intense
battle, but in the end the living knowledge is always victorious.
Teachers with teachership know that the authentic learner never stays with
one noble thought on one topic. One living knowledge bear many noble
thoughts. One living knowledge let them feed upon many topics of a
subject. One living knowledge also let them feed upon many subjects of
academy. To let the one living knowledge within bear many such noble
thoughts, the authentic learner search with the sense organs for many
sensations by connecting with the outer world. ONE sense within MAPS
itself TO the MANY features of the world without. Thus even consciousness
is a "one-to-many-mapping".
Nature is rich in "one-to-many-mappings". For example, a tree's one trunk
grew into many branches. One branch grew into many twigs. One twig grew
into many leaves. It has been a change from the one to the many.
Leaders+followers as well as teachers+students should bear in mind that
the change did not fragment the one into many. Break off merely one of the
many leaves and it will die.
It is the same with humans. To kill another human physically is to break a
leaf off from the tree of humankind. To kill another human spiritually is
to break a leaf off from the tree of humanity. The reward for this,
whatever the reason, often end up in getting self killed physically or
spiritually. This spiral of death began with the lie that spontaneous
changes are not "one-to-many-mappings".
To lead is not to kill somebody else physically. To teach is not to kill
somebody else spiritually. The leader-teacher will rather promote
leadership-teachership among followers-students so that they can excel in
physical and spiritual life. This living happens as a
"one-to-many-mapping".
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
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.