Replying to LO29531 --
Dear Organlearners,
I wrote:
>>I would like a dialogue on this "blindness to wholeness"
>> very much.
and Jan Lelie <janlelie@wxs.nl> responded with:
>Thanks for the suggested links. I've some work to do, so
>I'll be unable to look into them shortly. The notion of
>"blindness to wholeness" seems interesting. I would
>suggest that we're not blind to wholeness, but just rather
>slow in our perceptions. We're myopic. And no wonder,
>we're small and this is a big universe. It takes time for us
>- and for the universe - to learn how to behave, to deal
>with wholeness.
Greeings dear Jan,
Thank you for beginning this dialogue. I have changed the erronous
"blindness to wholeness" into the better "blind to wholeness".
I find it significant that you write that we are myopic. It means that we
are near sighted so that we have to bring our eyes close to an object
before we can see it with focus. But when we do that, all other objects
recede out of our angle of vision. Is it because of wanting to see a part
that we cannot see the whole, nor its field (context)? Is it not our
disciplinary thinking which makes us blind to wholeness? Or is it because
we lost our identity and forgot where it probably happened.
You suggest that we are slow in our perceptions of wholeness rather than
blind to it. Perhaps you are right because in 1964 i began to make my
first decisions in terms of wholeness, but only twenty years later could i
really tell what wholeness is about. All those 20 years i had few with
whom i could talk about wholeness. I think that should i had many more
dialogues on wholeness, i would have had much sooner clarity on wholeness.
My search for greater wholeness had a major influence on my personal
evolution, what i am today and what will become of me in future.
Blind to wholeness, myopic or slow of perceptions, the transformation of
ordinary organisations into learning organisations will suffer as a result
of it. This wholeness is needed for the learning individuals to join in a
learning organisation which is more than the sum of them.
Jan, the last sentence above appears to be very dogmatic. It is even more
so when compared to what you wrote:
>And is it a necessary condition for survival? Do we need wholeness
>in the here and now, hear and wow? Nope, so understanding is
>slow in developing and there was no priority to develop the wholistic
>sense organs.
Is wholeness really not necessary for survival? I wonder. Let us think of
physical wholeness. Consider as example the human body. The blood
circulatory system connects all the organs into one whole. When the heart
stops beating, the first organ to die is the brain because connection is
lost with the lungs supplying it with oxygen. When the brain dies, so ends
thinking. Abstract thinking is one of the things which makes the whole
more than the sum of the parts. Unlike other animals humans need to think
to surive.
About the wholeness of the sense organs, i began to think of my own. When
in a desert, i rely foremost on my hearing. I can hear sounds coming from
all directions, unlike sight, smell, taste and touch. If something moves
and makes the slightest sound, i hear it. I can react faster to hearing
than any of the other four sense organs. Does this not point to much
wholeness in hearing?
Last Saturday evening i was listening to several of Beethoven's piano
sonatas which he composed when already stone deaf. He lost the wholeness
of physical hearing, but his mind was so immensely tuned to it that he
gave us unprecedented wholeness of physical hearning in his compositions.
Blind to wholeness? What about deaf to wholeness?
>Evolution is an opportunistic force without vision and purpose.
Then why can we think of all life as a tree? Why are humans mammals? Why
is there so much similarity between humans and the great apes? Vision and
purpose are about the future. Looking from every major punctuated
equilibrium in evolution to its future (closer to the present), evolution
took a definite path in each case, clearly linking with its past path. It
is the path of new life forms with more organisation in them. Can we think
of this path as opportunism? I do not think so.
>Perhaps we should write a book: "The Sixth Sense -
>The Art and Practice of the Evolving Organisations"
>And off course a Fieldbook.
I could not prevent smiling for your creative allegory. But on a more
serious level. Will that book improve organisations when the majority of
their members are blind to wholeness?
While browsing the web for some more thoughts on this "blind to
wholeness", i came upon the following article by Lloyd Fell which has
a refreshing originality to it:
"Seven Aspects of Knowing
Quality of Life for Individuals and Organisations
A contribution to the science of wholeness" at
< http://www.pnc.com.au/~lfell/aspects.html >
The author identifies in each of these aspects a "blind spot". A quick
summary of these seven blindspots can be found at
< http://www.pnc.com.au/~lfell/blinds >
This made me wonder. Should i speak of the "blindspot to wholeness" rather
than "blind to wholeness"? Its like the semantical difference between the
Afrikaans (or Dutch) "sien"=see and "kyk"=look. They see wholeness, but
they do not look at wholeness. They see something, but they are not aware
that they are looking at wholeness with all its significance.
It has been very hot the past few days here in Pretoria. We need rain
because life is beginning to suffer. (I myself feel dead tired and as if i
cannot think clearly -- so forgive me.) Our rain comes a long way from the
hot Indian ocean in the east, traveling right over central Africa in the
west, then down south over Angola, Namibia and Namaqualand before it turns
north east until it reach the former Transvaal. Any break in the wholeness
of this long path (some 10 000km) causes heat waves like the present one.
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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