Entropy, Learning styles and corporate wars LO29528

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@postino.up.ac.za)
Date: 11/18/02


Replying to LO29496 --

Joy Vatsyayann ("Pixie Delite") <pixie_delite@hotmail.com> writes:

>>I think that you are completely right for having done it in
>>this way. Actually, what you did was to execute the task
>>in a CREATIVE manner such that others could benefit in
>>a CREATIVE manner from it.
>
>My turn to laugh now! I remember as part of the same
>review, my boss told me how the organisation hired me
>because they thought I was creative due to the work I had
>done in the past, my poetry and painting interests etc., but
>how I had failed to date to show the organisation any
>creativity and that all my worked lacked it!

Greetings dear Joy,

A highly creative person is often perceived by less creative people as
someone who is creating a world of his/her own while doing little to
contribute to their world. The creative person usually knows how his/her
world connects to their world, but it is they who do not know how their
world connect to his/hers. The reason i think is that they allow for
little, if any, creativity in their learning.

>In fact one can already begin to see why upon analysis
>(as you might have guessed Mr Lange - even though the
>emotional side within me has made life uneasy, the rationale
>seeking side has been analysing behaviour patterns of both
>my manager and myself and trying to see it all for what it is).

The emotions of a creative person are like the high seas. Sometimes calm
as a mirror and sometimes rough enough to make the biggest ship suffer. It
is because of these very emotions as entropic forces that the person can
create so intensely. To live with such stormy emotions is not easy. But my
advice is to dissipate that emotions into constructive creations rather
than trying to change other people.

>All answers in exams are sought in a set way. The tutor
>marks you down, quite often, not on the merits (or demerits)
>of your input but the fact that you 'didn't quite put it down
>as he/she wanted you to' or you skipped 'the points they
>saw as the appropriate answer' - even if you have given
>something that might be thought provoking and accurate.

I have experienced it self many times. I gardually developed the strategy
to make first sure what i know and then secondly to formulate the answers
in a manner which will please the lecturer. I hated the second part of the
strategy. In my younger days teher were still the olf 78rpm viniel
recordings of music. One famous brand was His Master's Voice. It had a
picture of a dog laying on his master's jacket, listening to a funnel
shaped loudspeaker. These lecturers reminded me of His Master's Voice.

Today i know why they act like that. They mark the students according to
some fixed external information rather than with knowledge which dwells
within them.

>As my manager summed it up quite well. "Joy the
>organisation will try and mould you into what it wants
>you to become. It is up to you how you help this process
>forward and make it easier for all. The organisation has
>its own goals and standards it wants to achieve and thus
>will continue to try and mould and build you how it thinks
>it can achieve its goals. its up to you really. And if there
>are issues along the way, the organisation has a right to
>review its position with you". Why don't you fire me
>already I say!

This is a pretty description of a manager which thinks he is the brains of
the organisation. That organisation is as far from a LO (Learning
Organisation) as the North is from the South. To be the brains of the
organisation, that manager has to brainwash every employee. How he can
still expect any creativity after such brainwashing astounds me.

>The sad part of the malfunctioning computer saga is that,
>Mr Lange, the pain you receive as a consequence of this
>malfunction - not from the power circles - but from those
>near and dear to you - because they cannot see.... in the
>end it is always easier to think that "joy" is a screw up rather
>than "most systems joy is encountering are not in sync with
>her philosophy" because large systems can't be all that
>wrong can they!

Joy, you will just have to accept the fact that people cannot connect to
your creativity, although you may very well connect to their activities.

Large system can be seriously wrong. For example, the government of South
Africa was wrong with its ideology and policy of apartheid. Even a worse
example is the present world economy based on fossil fuels. Only when
"die-off" hits the G8 countries, will people begin to realise how wrong
this modern world economy had been.

>I have seen the faith of my parents in me fade over the
>years. I have lost many friends. I have heard my own
>parents included laugh at me and be frustrated with my
>disposition and think I am only making up excuses each
>time to avoid work. I have had teachers -- even within
>the field of Systems thinking -- question my potential as
>a student because of my learning disability and unfocused
>mental waves.

A highly creative person must make very sure that there is not any truth
in what people say of him/her. How? By studying the life and works of many
other highly creative people and comparing him/herself to them.

I wonder what your "learning disability" is. I had several "learning
disabilities". One is that i got easily distracted by something novel
happening rather than keep my head to the work involved. Another is that i
got very sleepy when information was recited to me. A third was that i
wanted to do too many things to do all of them well. A fourth was that i
seldom completed a task before a new task caught my attention.

As for your "unfocused mental waves", are they not perhaps the
"Steigerung" which Goethe talked about? This happens when a string of
novel connections are made, each connection leading to an emergence.
Goethe knew that without sufficient wholeness such a "Steigerung" is
impossible. On the other hand, every mental emergence is but like a baby.
One has to make sure that it also becomes an adult. This means that once
several "Steigerung"s of the same kind has been experienced, one must sit
down and work them into one definite "composition".

>But the truth is, in my entire life I have only found one
>mentor who has nourished me rightly and made me
>believe in learning - David Lewis (ex principal, teacher
>and great man and friend).

I also had been so extremely fortunate in having had such a mentor, my
late uncle Philip (my father's brother). He was a teacher in the town
where i studied at university and later became a researcher in soil
science. Eventually i became his colleague, teaching side by side with him
Physical Science. It is he who first saw how i struggeled in creating
Goethe's "Steigerung" into the learning of Physical Science. He became so
excited by it that he began to do it self. Together we discovered the
pinnacles and pitfalls of "Steigerung" in learning. Together we marveled
at the importance of wholeness to creativity.

>>Keep up living true to yourself and your creativity while
>>aring for others in the same manner.
>
>Thank you Mr Lange. I try my best to do so. Energy
>levels run though inside though being so isolated. That is
>perhaps one of the subconscious reasons I am back on
>LO online. Just to feel that connection again. To suck if
>I may from the collective energy pool.

Sooner or later you will be making the discovery of your life. Then you
will have in it also another pool to drink from. Or like Copernicus said,
it will become a burning fury which no power on earth can extinguish. But
remember what Pasteur said, major discoveries are only made by those who
have prepared their minds properly by learning creatively each day.

With care and best wishes

-- 

At de Lange <amdelange@postino.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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