Thomas Benjamin wrote on 9 Apr in LO13160
> I would like to clarify what I was trying to convey. As infants and
> children we are innocent, living in a state of paradise. Soon, we
> experience, because of an imperfect world, that we are not in paradise. We
> lose our innocense. Consequently we tend to distrust the world, the digree
> of this distrust is proportional to ones own experience of the loss of
> innocense. Learning is ones own climb back to innocense, even in this
> imperfect world. Wholeness I believe comes from this learning process one
> goes through. Return to innocense means that one learns to trust again,
> believing in the ultimate care that God provides. In the process we begin
> to discover individuals, groups and systems we can trust.
Thomas, thank you for not taking exception to the 'harsh' manner in which
I have replied to you. I did it merely to step up the entropy production.
Thank you also for your clarification.
Here in our part of the world semantical spars (skirmishes) are often a
way to escape from solving problems. Please accept that what I now am
going to say, is not a way of escaping, but actually the solution.
We have to make the very important distinction between
(1) to trust a person, and
(2) to know that a person is trustworthy.
Case (2) is possible without having to trust that person, i.e.
without having case (1). Thus we can maintain our trust only in
God. On the other hand, case (1) is possible while the person
may be very UNtrustworthy, i.e. without having case (2).
What exactly is it that we do not have in case (2)? Trustworthyness? No,
a person would be very silly to trust a person known to be unworthy of
trust. What really is absent is KNOWLEDGE WHICH RESULTED FROM LEARNING. In
other words, we need learning not only to become trustworthy, but also to
be able to identify trustwothyness. This brings us back to my original
post.
Children learn not only from the day they are born, but even in the womb.
I am not a child any more so that it is difficult for me to evaluate
whether a child trust his/her parents and grandparents, or whether the
child recognises their trustworthyness. (I observe my granddaughter very
closely and up to now I cannot decide which case it is.) What I do know,
is that most of those who wish to ensnare children for their own selfish
purposes, is very careful to let the child learn the contrary. By this I
mean that they decive the children by the very act of learning!
I also differ from you that we do not learn to become innocent again in
our maturity. We learn to love more an more unconditionally. One of the
signs of such an unconditional love is its 'apparent' innocence. I mention
'apparent' because we do not show what we know, namely that evil and sin
is destroying the world. I cannot give a better example than Jesus. He
knew all about evil and sin - yet he lived like an innocent child and
commanded us to do the same.
Lastly, I find it impossible to explain trust without referring to my
faith. I know that many people want to rationalise without having to refer
to faith. I will try to walk every mile with them, but at some stage they
will have to walk alone. This makes me sad.
Thomas, I love your last sentence.
"The creative energy an Individual has
aquired should become accessable to the community."
It is truly a great sentence from which we can derive much
wisdom.
If I do not answer you soon, please have patience. I will spend
some days in the desert. I am so excited!
Best wishes
--
At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>