Replying to LO27996 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>Through Mohammed I learned a charming custom
>of his culture, which by the way in his case is not
>Arabic. When in a shop with him he said, "Please,
>look around and take anything you want."
>
>It is of course my intention to learn more about Islam.
Greetings dear Andrew,
Yes, I think we must learn more about other religions and cultures
otherwise we will keep on repeating the same mistakes in our ignorance.
. "Lord, deliver me from the man who never
. makes a mistake, and also from the man
. who makes the same mistake twice."
-- Dr. William Mayo
. "The better a man is, the more mistakes he
. will make, for the more new things he will try.
. I would never promote to a top level job a
. man who was not making mistakes ....
. otherwise he is sure to be mediocre."
-- Peter Drucker
. "Where work is done, mistakes are made.
. Only when all the mistakes are corrected
. the work will become finished"
;-)/^\
Your mentioning of Islam and the Arab culture made me think of the
following.
Western culture often boasts of the Mediterranean (Roman and Greek)
culture as its root. But few westerners today know that by the end of the
4th century the Mediterranean culture had declined so far that much of it
disintegrated with the Germanic invasions from northern Europe. Hence the
cultural evolution shifted from Rome to Constantinople (later called
Byzanthium and finally Istanbul).
Consider, for example, as one indicator of such cultural evolution the
development of mathematics. In those days doing mathematics was not a
source of income, but a free mental service to society offered for its
upliftment. The following remarkable site gives the autobiographies of all
major mathematicians through the entire world for all times.
< http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/BiogIndex.html >
Scroll down to the bottom where the biographies are arranged according to
succesive time eras. Click on the era "(before) -500 AD". Study each
biography, noticing from which country and culture each mathematician came
from. Then do the same for the period 500-1499 AD. It is a time consuming
job, but most illuminating. Whereas mathematics declined in the
Mediterranean culture, it began to bloom in the Arabic culture.
How I wish I could point to you to a similar site for chemistry. Through
my researches into the ancient history of chemistry, I noticed a similar
pattern. If I had seven times the time and enough funds, I would have done
similar projects for chemistry, biology, medicine and literature. As far
as chemistry and biology, I am confident that the pattern would be the
same -- a decline in the west, a shift from west to east and a bloom in
the east up to the 10th century.
But now see what happens next. The biographies from the Arabain culture
begin to decline. After two centuries biographies in Europe began to
appear again. The epoch of the European universities began. All over
Europe enquiring minds began to consult passionately Arabian sources of
information while the growth in the latter began to diminish. The
preparation for the great Renaissance in Europe had begun while the Arabic
culture was declining.
What was the reason for the declining for the Arabic culture? Many would
easily propose the advent of the Islamic religion since the middle of the
7th century as the basic reason. In fact, many offered the same reason for
the decline of the Mediterranean culture, namely the advent of the
Christian religion. However, for anyone willing to study the New Testament
and the Quran carefully, there is no evidence that these religions
considered authentic learning and scientific knowledge alien to them. What
these religions actually did were to supply the norms to which such a
learning endeavour should comply to. They even encouraged the growth of
personal knowledge through authentic learning.
A most remarkable document in this regard for Islam is the
following which your fellow learners may find at:-
"Causes of Rise and Decline of Islam"
< http://salam.muslimsonline.com/~azahoor/decline1.htm >
The writer has an astounding insight into authentic learning and
personal knowledge. How I wish I could point you to a similiar
document for Christianity. Nevertheless, we much search for
other reasons.
In my honest opinion the reasons of the decline of the Arabic
culture (as with the Mediterranean culture earlier) are three fold,
having nothing to do with religion except for finding religion a
handy scape goat.
(1) The destruction of the Bibliotheca in Alexandria resulting in a
severing from the past. Please study my:- "Stop burning the MANY except
the ONE. LO26466" < http://www.learning-org.com/01.04/0007.html >
(2) The invasion of a weakened Arabic culture by the Mongolic nations
under the leadership of Genghiz Khan (like the invasion of the weakened
Mediterranean culture by the Germanic nations).
(3) The actual weakening of the Arabic culture by many political leaders
who claimed that they rule in the name of the Islamic religion's Allah
(like it happened in the Christian religion too).
Reason (3) is for me the common cause in the decline of many cultures.
Political leaders dictated their followers for supposedly their good
rather than actually consulting them widely to learn what is good for
them. These autocratic leaders usually consulted only the men of fortune
who self exploited the masses for their own opportunistic gains.
Dictatorship and furtuneship go hand in hand.
It is not a case of the leaders' will against the followers' will. It is
rather a case of the leaders' will against the authentic learning and
hence personal knowledge of the followers. Any leadership which neglects
authentic learning degrades into a cruel autocracy. Understanding this
asymmetry between the will of the leaders and the knowledge of the
followers is crucial to prevent a dictatorship. The belief that a
particular kind of democracy (like the constitutional, representative and
inclusive ones) will prevent a dictatorship have often provided leaders
the loophole to become dictators.
It said that power corrupts. But how does it happen? Autocratic leaders
use rote learning to drive their followers into camps where these
followers never would have gone themselves. They pay no attention to the
authentic learning and personal knowledge of their followers, neither in
helping them to learn authentically nor learning authentically from them.
They simply declare that only they as leaders know what is best for their
followers. In other words, their corrpution begins by corrupting
knowledge. To shut the mouth of anyone trying to question their autocracy,
they often use the oldest trick among all. They declare that they rule by
divine preordination. That is why they use a religion to defend their
dictatorship.
We will have to become wise to leaders with autocratic tendencies who may
slowly diverge us away from the path of a rising culture. Perhaps the
following is an example of such wisdom:-
< http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12477 >
Thinking of autocratic leaders who can cause the decline of a culture
involving many nations, how much easier is it not for leaders to cause the
decline of a nation or even a large corporation in it? As the prophet
Hosea said it, the decline is because of a lack of knowledge. This lack of
knowledge appears because of corrupting learning and hence corrupting
knowledge as its outcome.
Is the Western culture of Western nations declining? Some people see such
a culture as all the artifacts of a civilisation. But I think personally
of a nation as an organisation and thus of a culture of nations as an even
more encompassing organisation. By thinking this way I feel that the rise
or decline of a culture can be followed by looking for the presence or
absence of metanoia in it. But to certify it -- no way!
The medieval guilds played a vital role during the Dark Age of European
culture. They functioned like tiny LOs as Leo Minnigh and I have wrote
about several years ago on our LO-dialogue. Whether Western culture is
declining or rising again, LOs with their ubique metanoia will play a
vital role in it. In a declining culture they become a safe niche and in a
rising culture they are at its daring frontiers.
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.