Dear organlearners,
John Constantine <rainbird@trail.com> writes in LO15703:
> As was said long ago, there is nothing new under the sun. What we see,
> hear and feel today and project into tomorrow, is only a portion of what
> has come before. What is being discussed, at least in my view, has been
> discussed over prior millenia. As human beings, we haven't come to
> "solution" yet. And we won't.
John, the more my consciousness transforms, the more I become aware of a
number of things which have to do with what you have written:
$ I have a "tacit dimension to my knowledge".
$ I transform this "tacit knowledge" to higher levels of knowledge by
means of my creativity, resulting in language, music, technology,
etc.
$ This "tacit knowledge" is my principal level of knowledge.
$ This "pricipal knowledge" exists because I am a human who interact
creatively with other humans and the rest of reality.
$ There is an immense overlapping between my "pricipal knowledge" and
the "pricipal knowledge" of each of my fellow humans. This why I
can say that there is very little new under the sun.
$ The great variation ensues when we transform our "principal
knowledge" to higher intelectual levels. This why I can also say
that there we perceive so much new under the sun.
> As such, democracy is the ultimate form of learning organization.
John, this is truely a great statement! A system of government is a
democracy when every person in a democracy understands this question and
give a sensible answer to it!
> "In our own best interests" - how do we know what that might represent?
> How do we know what is in our best interest? How then do we judge what we
> are to do, and how to do it, or not. The Tragedy of the Commons - all
> doing what each of us think is in our best interests, and ultimately
> destroying the whole. We can never escape our impact on others, or theirs
> on us, no matter how far away we move. Ultimately we must depend on wisdom
> as suitable input for the "how to think" as opposed to the "what to think"
> if we are to "raise the average higher" even if it there are peaks and
> valleys in the graph.
Your question " How do we know what is in our best interest?" reminds met
how I wish this list to contemplate the thread/subject with a name
somewhat like "What is best for us?" In a sense, this is central to
Sherri's dilemma.
> What is democracy - the ultimate learning organization. The hope? - that
> we are a better community and better persons for having learned. If not,
> we will go the way of all flesh, never having learned a thing that is
> lasting.
If we study history of the world through the ages, we see that whenever
people (individuals, communities and even nations) have learnt "wisely",
they avoid repeating mistakes.
Unfortunately, our study will also show how few people have indeed learnt
"wisely". The great majority of humankind keep on repeating the mistakes.
Thus there must be something terribly wrong in the way humankind has
learnt so far. The majority of humankind remains to be ignorant of wisdom.
I have argued before that a persisting ignorance is the result of an
inaccessible paradigm. (I wonder how many have understood this argument?)
It means that a LO democracy will not ensue until we know $ which paradigm
will make LO democracy accessible $ how the shift to this paradigm can be
accomplished.
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/>