Replying to LO27720 --
Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you.
Is it not a strange synchronicity that while Leo Minnigh
<l.d.minnigh@library.tudelft.nl> was working on his subject "holism, a
product LO27720", I was working on the subject above. Only this morning I
received his thoughtful contribution which I have enjoyed very much. Thank
you Leo. That is why am now linking my own thoughts to his in LO27720.
Leo, this is what I had in mind.
Humans usually have a mission or a cause to live for. Some people believe
their cause is more important than the prosperity of millions of people
affected negatively by such a cause.
Think of the horror when the two WTC towers collapsed on 11 September
2001, killing thousands of innocent people. Terrorists believe that this
destruction of buildings would end the demise of their own culture. Think
of the tragedy when workers in companies get paid off, throwing tens of
thousands of reliable people into poverty and despair. Executives believe
that this destruction of jobs would end declining profits for their
companies. What is worse, the horror when the two towers came down for
political profit or the tragedy when executives fired workers for
financial profit?
A profit is a gain in any walk of life like the academical, political,
financial, social, cultural and religious walks. Dear fellow learner, does
your mission involve making a profit in this wide sense? Do you use your
mission to justify any destruction so as to maintain such a profit? Can
any mission justify destructive creativity?
What about myself and these questions? My mission is to teach fellow
humans how to learn authentically so as to profit in personal knowledge.
Do I use my mission to justify any destruction so as to maintain such a
profit? No, not any destruction -- but yes, destroying within myself that
which prevents me to learn authentically. Furthermore, even if I want to,
I cannot destroy in any other person anything which prevents such a person
to learn authentically. Only that person can do it self.
What do I have to destroy in myself so as to learn authentically? I can
list many things, but they all bore down to one thing -- my "ignorant
arrogance". I have put the two words in quotation marks trying to
formulate one concept involving both ignorance and arrogance. In my mother
tongue Afrikaans we have the single word "domastrant" for this concept.
I can also describe myself as "the fool who believes he knows enough to
change some things"-- the "executive fool". How many of these things can I
change for better rather than worse? How much respect do I have for
things which I need not change? How long will it take me to honour all
living things as sacred, things scaringly big as well as things too tiny
to see? Each day I have to admit in shame that I meddled with sacrilege
rather than served with love. It is because, even though I want to teach
authentic learning, still lack self in authentic learning.
Almost daily I meet fellow humans who are unhappy because someone was
cruel to them. Sometimes I dare to ask "Have you been cruel to someone
else"? The answer is usually "No". But thinking of myself, I have to admit
that many times I was cruel to others, although usually ignorant of it. I
tried to be kind, but what happened was cruel. I still have to learn much
not to let kindness degenerate into cruelty.
Kindness have much to do with the 7Es (seven essentialities of
creativity). I know too little of the 7Es to prevent making other people
unhappy. Each of these 7Es (liveness, sureness, wholeness, fruitfulness,
spareness, otherness and openness) has still to increase much in me. For
example, a lack of wholeness causes me not to take all other people into
consideration. How is this possible?
A whole is not wholeness, nor does wholes together imply
wholeness. However, the unity among wholes implies wholeness.
This unity can be described according to Jan Smuts as all the
other wholes acting as the field of one whole in it. I think that it
can also be described as the associative pattern
whole-X * Y * whole-Z
where Y is the mouthpiece between any two wholes X and Z of
that unity of wholes. Clearly, when Y is absent, then the
associative pattern
X * Y * Z
of wholeness is lost so that the unity breaks up. If the wholes X
and X are humans, then the loss of Y will break up the unity
among those humans. Such a loss in wholeness leads to
destructive creativity, cruelty and sorrow.
Let us investigate this Y further. We may call it the "umlomo", the Zulu
word for "mouth piece" or "interpreter". Does the umlomo Y need to be of
the same kind as the wholes X and Y? I do not think so. For example, two
leaves X and Z on a tree are united by a branch Y. Not even the wholes X
and Z need to be of the same kind. A leaf X and a flower Z can be united
by a branch Y.
Does the umlomo Y need to be a whole just as X and Z are also wholes? I
think that the answer to this question is crucial to uncover so much of
our misconception of wholeness. As far as I understand it, the umlomo Y
must definitely be a whole. As soon as Y itself becomes broken, it cannot
function as an umlomo any more. Consequently the associative pattern is
lost and hence wholeness.
Allow me to use a fantastic example from chemistry. When two
atoms X and Z bind, they do so by sharing at least one electron
pair between them. Thus the associative pattern is
X * : * Z
where the two dots ":" represent the electron pair. Any "free
radical" (two words, one concept) contains an atom with one
single electron "." in it. Let .R symbolise this free radical. Should
.R come into contact with the molecule X : Z, it tries to grab one
of the two electrons binding X and Z. Should it succeed in
becoming :R, the remainder
X * . * Z
becomes unstable and breaks up. The weakest between X and
Z, say X, is left with a single electron as .X while the strongest
now goes with the free radical as
R * : * Z
Free radicals are also called oxidants because a single oxygen atom ".O"
rather than an oxygen molecule "O:O" is the second most powerful oxidant
known. Oxygen as molecules is of utmost necessity to our living bodies.
But free rree radicals such as an oxygen atom are dangerous to the
chemistry of all living bodies, even ours. Free radicals are the major
cause of an inferior immunological system, cancer and aging. Thus our
bodies have developed a remarkable strategy to remove these free radicals
as soon as they enter the body. You can read more about it at at sites
such as
< http://www.caribspa.com/medicine.html >
< http://www.tstl4sda.net/Newsletters/newsletters/2001-08.asp >
However, the two points which I want to make with this example
is the following:
(1) How often do we use an inferior umlomo y rather than the
superior Y to set up the associative pattern
human-X * y * human-Z
of wholeness?
(2) How often do we produce free radicals .R which may destroy
existing associative patterns
human-X * Y * human-Z
of wholeness?
When is the umlomo the inferior y rather than the superior Y?
We have seen in the chemical example that it is when one electron
"." rather an electron pair ":" binds X and Z as
X * . * Z
rather than as
X * : * Z
Humankind have a saying several millennia old that when two
or more persons can bear witness to something it is the truth.
Anything "y" less than the truth "Y" will make the associative
pattern
human-X * y * human-Z
of wholeness unstable.
This why I often stress that what I write on authentic learning
cannot be taken as the whole truth Y. It is but a half truth y.
The other half y has to be supplied by you as a fellow learner.
I need to articulate my authentic learning and you need to
articulate yours so that we can become a stable bond as
human-X * Y * human-Z
Only when both our articulations y and y as the Y act in the
harmony of a dialogue as the electron pair ":" does, then we
begin to experience wholeness between us.
Personal knowledge is the integral outcome of all my authentic
learnings. I can reflect some of this personal knowledge in my
writings. These writings are just information and never knowledge.
However, when someone considers them as knowledge unknown
to her/him and thus try internalise this information (parading as
knowledge) with rote learning (memorise and regurgitate), it
becomes a free radical .R destroying some associative pattern
human-X * Y * human-Z
leaving us with
R * Y * human-Z
and a severed "human-X".
We know the "R * Y * human-Z" better as a partisanship, a clique, a class
or a group of peers. They associate themselves on some radical information
.R parading as the whole truth. Anyone not willing to do so then becomes a
severed "human-X".
Wolfgang Pauli discovered a most intriguing property in quantum mechanics
of such electron pairs. Each electron has four quantum numbers. When two
electrons act as a pair, three of their four numbers become the same.
These three numbers are always whole numbers. However, the fourth one must
always differ! It is the "spin number" having the fractional values +1/2
and -1/2. The one electron in the pair has the value +1/2 which means it
spins in the one direction while the other electron has the value -1/2
which means it spins in the opposite direction. In other words, there must
be otherness (another essentiality) between the two electrons as a pair so
they can serve wholeness.
Likewise my authentic learning and yours cannot be exactly the
same if we want to set up an associative pattern
human-X * Y * human-Z
of wholeness between us. We have to endeavour like the
electrons for as many wholes we share to become the same,
but in one set of halves we have to agree to differ. This reminds
me of the relationships between women and men which so often
get fragmented into feminism and chauvinism. There are so many
wholes in which men and women can and have to share. Only in
the sex related halves we differ like the two electrons spinning in
opposite directions.
Can the ideological motive of a terrorist or the profit motive of a
capitalist serve as the umlomo Y for a stable associative pattern
human-X * Y * human-Z
of wholeness? Can this ideology or profit not be the very cause
of an unstable associative pattern
human-X * y * human-Z
where the ideology or profit is the inferior umlomo y? Let us see
if we can learn something from nature.
Nature has its own profit law, namely LEP (Law of Entropy Production). The
entropy of the universe has to increase endlessly. Although nature uses
this profit in entropy to drive its evolution, it does not use it to guide
its evolution. It uses the 7Es to keep the profit in entropy under
control. These 7Es can even be detected in the mathematical equation with
which we are now able to describe this profit in entropy. In other words,
a profit in entropy without a gain in each of the 7Es will lead to
destruction rather than construction. This is how all bombs, poisons and
diseases work.
Why is there so often so little compassion for the welfare of fellow
humans? Why is there so often so little insight in sponsoring a healthy
ecology? Why are learners controlled by what they should learn and how
they should learn? Is it not because we are ignorant to the fact that an
umlomo can be the inferior y rather than the superior Y? Is it not the
fact that we are ignorant to the many free radicals we produce?
A chemical substance (atom or molecule) will act as free radical when it
has an unpaired electron. All the even numbered electrons in the
substance, even its non-bonding electrons, have to be paired. A DNA
molecule has even billions of such electron pairs. Chemists say
technically that such electron pairs fill their orbitals completely while
a single electron fills its orbital incompletely. A DNA molecule does not
have even one single electron filling its orbital incompletely. Likewise,
whatever we create, we should try creating it completely. We should not
leave anything in it incomplete. Any creation of us less than a whole
cannot bind us into a greater wholeness.
This is one lesson which all great artists have been teaching us through
their magnificent works of art. The sculptor Rodin was so aware of this
lesson that he worked it into most of his statues, leaving some part of
them on purpose incomplete. The composer Beethoven was so aware of this
lesson that he worked the human voice into his last (9th) symphony to
complete the orchestra. But how is it with science?
Scientists produce an exponentially increasing number of specialised
reports which are called scientific publications. This is called the
information explosion or third wave. Such specialised reports, focussing
on only one of many topics of one of many subjects are incomplete because
they lack other topics and even subjects. Thus these publications are
potential free radicals which may be used destructively. The misuse of
scientific information is one of our hottest post-modern problems. Any
person can make any destructive device by just finding the relevant
information and applying it accordingly. For example, dangerous drugs can
be synthesised or valuta transactions be made to bring a nation easily on
its knees as our own nation recently experienced.
We even have allowed this multitude of free radicals to fragment the
various orders of our spirituality like creativity, knowledge, character,
faith and love into separate subjects. As a result humankind gets hammered
by a lack of constructive creativity. Humankind suffers because of a lack
of knowledge. Humankind perishes because of a lack of wisdom. Humankind
loses its good name because of a lack of character. Humankind gets
enslaved because of a lack of faith. Humankind will now have to choose
between the kingdom of love and the tyranny of hate.
As I am writing now in the early hours of the morning, I hear the cocks
crowing, the birds chirping and the dogs barking. Even though still night,
they expect a new bright day with at least as much wholeness as the
previous day. Dear fellow learners, what do you expect in the year to
become? Tragedy and horror or bliss and tranquillity? Less wholeness or
more wholeness?
What we become is through our own creativity, controlled by the back
action of the rest of our personality through wholeness and the other 7Es.
We cannot claim anyone else to be responsible for our future. We can erect
towers with more than a hundred levels or we can demolish them. We can
conglomerate corporations with trillion dollars of assets or we can
demolish them. We can create heaven or hell. The choice is ours. What will
we do? Last year, the Horrible Year (HY) taught us clearly. Offence is no
substitute for defence. Construction through destruction is a surrealistic
dream. To love some people and hate others is a myth.
We will have to seek increasing wholeness otherwise the future will become
worse than the past. To understand this increasing wholeness, we will have
to grow also in the other six 7Es -- liveness, sureness, fruitfulness,
spareness, otherness and openness. One way to be sure that we do not have
enough wholeness, is to examine the organisations to which we belong.
Without enough wholeness they cannot act as Learning Organisations. We
cannot force our organisations to become LOs. They will have to emerge
spontaneously into LOs. Without sufficient wholeness as with the other six
7Es this will not happen.
Let us then learn how to increase in wholeness. Here is a final
exmple which most of you have tacit knowledge of. A pot with
dry soil is one whole and a seed kernel is another whole. Put the
seed in the soil. It will not germinate in the dry soil. There is no
sufficient wholeness. We need the umlomo Y in the associative
pattern
soil * Y * seed
of wholeness. This umlomo is life giving water. When we add
water to this pattern
soil * water * seed
the germination begins.
This example reminds me of Jesus who compared himself to life
giving water. He taught people how to live for increasing wholeness.
Like it is written in Luke 5:31
"They who are whole (hugiaino) need not a physician ..."
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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