Jan Lelie <janlelie@pi.net> writes in LO15708:
> Thank you, At for your thoughts on my post.
It is a pleasure.
> I would like to gain some more understanding by interpretation. But it
> went a bit out of control. I tried to enhance understanding by creating
> summaries.
I liked what you did. You were beginning to articulate your own tacit
knowledge. This is very important in emergent learning.
(-- indicates Jan's summary)
> -- Trust may break down near transition points
...snip... (Jan's own exposition on this summary)
I agree with much what you have said. I get the idea that you view trust
as something simplel. I think of trust as something complex with many
dimensions (7 of them). If any one of these dimensions is underdeveloped,
trust will certainly break down.
> - - Identifing with changes (and insecurity) may enhance distrust
...snip... (Jan's own exposition on this summary)
The essentiality "becoming-being" has a rich/complex manifold. Examples
of it is change-constant and process-structure. What you have done in your
exposition is to show how disharmony between change (becoming) and being
will shatter the trust.
> > It is far more complex for the emergence to happen than for the
> > immergence. It is because the emergence happens contingently and not
> > automatically.
>
> - - until now, in evolution, trusting the outside system was more important
>
> You have lost me here.
Thank you for being honest. I will try to find you.
> Do you mean it happens suddenly, unpredictable?
No, it never happens suddenly and unpredictable, although this is claimed
by the far majority of present "experts" on emergence. If some "thing
happens" suddenly and unpredictable for a person, then it means that this
person did not have a paradigm sufficient enough to make him/her senstive
to this "thing happening". One of the seven essentialities of all
emergences are (what I call) "open-paradigm". If a person is insensitive
to this essentiality, even on the tacit level, then the person will
experience emergences as sudden and unpredictable.
However, if a person is sensitive to this essentiality, it does not mean
that the person will not find emergences sudden and unpredictable any
more.
Firstly, the person may be insensitive to one or more of other six
remaining essentialities. (We can say that the person is insensitive to
the form-syntaxis-mechanics-feminity of emergences). Thus it is necessay
to check on each of them. For example, the person may be insensitive to
the wholeness ("associativity-monadicity") of emergences. Such a person
will then show very little understanding for anything which has to do with
holism.
Secondly, the person may try to understand emergences with a paradigm
which does not connect to all emergences. (We can say that the person is
insensitive to the content-semantics-dynamics- masculinity of emergences.)
Thus it is necessary to check on all the stages of the dynamics. For
example, the person may operate from the paradigm that all valuable
changes have to be forced by external work and control. Such a person will
then show very little understanding for anything which has to do with
natural-spontaneous processes.
Jan. If I still lost you, please say so.
> I assume that it is more difficult to experience the processes within
> myself, then to describe a system outside myself, probably because i'm
> biased towards externalising things, attributing parameters to a system,
> decribing the way it will conduct, move, evolve itself and conclude that
> i'm not a part of it (but who started externalising in the first place,
> he?). Also millions of years of evolution have been spend in interacting
> with an environment outside ourself, so some specialisation might be
> expected.
The difficulty which you "assume" (feel intuitively?), has much to do with
the articulation (creative emergence) of your tacit knowledge to the
higher levels of knowledge. Our problem is that when we articulate the
creative behaviour of any system outside us, our tacit knowledge act
exactly as a silent partner. We make use of our tacit knowledge without
becoming aware of it.
...snip...
> > If we accept the tenet that "to learn is to create", then we have these
> > two major phases also in learning. Thus we may speak of emergent learning
> > and digestive learning.
>
> - - two different and interacting directions.
Yes - yes. They act in a push-pull fashion, like the hands (pull) and feet
(push) when climbing a rope.
> I was talking with a South African woman (talking about coincedences) last
> week and she defined learning as 'creating meaning'. So this leads me to
> emergent meaning and digestive meaning. It occurs to me that this maps
> nicely onto two main directions of change:
>
> a. change (learning, creating, adapting) towards more differences or
> differentiating and
Correct, but specifically a change in quality (intensive property).
> not a. change (..) towards reducing differences or conventionalising.
No. It is also a change, but specifically in quantity (extensive
property).
There is an important difference between an intensive and an extensive
property. Whenever a system is scaled, the intensive properties stay the
same while the extensive properties get scaled. For example, love is an
intensive parameter (quality) because the love of a child is not of a
lower scale than the love of an adult.
The fact that there are intensive and extensive properties is a very
important clue to what paradigm we need to become sensitive to emergences.
If a person's paradigm do not connect to intensive and extensive
properties, then such a person will not know when and how to expect
emergences.
> These two counterinvent one another, meaning that, like yin and yang, the
> one will generate the other.
Absolutely correct.
> As a change agent, i try to contain these
> movements as long as necessary for a transition to occur.
Yes there is not such a thing as an infinite string of directly connected
emergences. Leo Trotsky, for example, made this error by believing in the
eternal revolution. To strive for an infinite string of directly connected
emergences, i.e, to try and stay at the edge of chaos, consumes internal
organisation until no emergence can be sustained any more.
Likewise, there is not such a things as an infinite string of directly
connected digestions. At a certain stage the effect of over weight or
excess baggage cannot be counteracted anymore.
> This i think is
> the great (creat :-)) evolutionary breaktrough: being able consiously to
> sustain (or selecting) differentiating (or mutating) and conventionalising
> (or retaining) movements; that's why i think evolution is now going at an
> uprecedented pace.
Certainly not of nature, but definitely of culture. The next 50 years will
bring cultural changes about which will completely bewilder those not
carefully prepared for it. But again, is we do not operate from the
correct paradigm, these changes will come as sudden and unpredictable as a
theive in the night.
...snip...
> OK: now try this for an imagination excercise (i'm inventing this as i
> write, so please take care): experience your organisation as a mirror
> image of yourself. Close your eyes and look at your organisation as if
> looking into a mirror. It is as if you're looking into a mirror. Take a
> few minutes and experience what you like and do not like of your image,
> the things you see in this reflection (!). Note a few down, for instance:
> big, safe and also unpredictable.
...snip...
Jan, I am sorry to have snipped so much of it. What you have done above,
is to view the organisation in terms of the essentiality wholeness
("associativity-monadicity"). Reality is a monad/holon. One part of
reality is always mirrored by the rest of reality. For example, to say
that I am a human it is necessary to look at my image in at least the rest
of reality. In other words, no human is a lone island.
> > When global conditions out of their control force them to move far from
> > equilbrium, these very anomalies will soon cause their downfall
> > (immergence). If they cannot resolve the anomalies, they cannot adapt. How
> > can they escape the fate of the giant dinosaurs if they cannot adapt?
>
> - - adapting to dynamical forces
>
> As i experience this world, we can 'control' many forces (some call it
> energies, or tensions) and thereby evolve, adapt, change, learn much more
> rapidly. The forces seem to me to trick us somehow when we try to control
> them. For one, we are still very much un-aware of the counter products
> that we generate, especially when there are long feedback loops and weak
> interactions (for instance polution problems, alpine skiing and flooding;
> systems thinking helps a lot here).
Correct. Your phrase "when we try to control them" is extremely important.
This exactly where our culture and nature diverge which will eventually
lead to a head-on clash
> And on the other hand, as we create the resistance to change as a by
> product of change itself (my assumption) because we need very high levels
> of self-perception (mental models) during change processes, which nobody
> has taught me for sure, anomalies surely result.
If you used the word "apathy" rather than "resistance" I agrre 100% with
you. This apathy results because we denay the push-pull action between
emergences far from equilbrium and digestions close to equilbrium.
> Dinosaurs, i saw on television, were wiped out of exsistence by a
> collision with a meteor, comet or small planetoide at a rather peculiar
> place and under very unfaveraouble conditions. Just tough luck; the same
> luck, that keeps big organisations together.
Tough luck? Think about humanity! Assume that they are on a course in
which their culture will clash head-long with nature and forget that I am
predicting it. If they do not become aware of this danger, they do not
operate from the correct paradigm. Yet, the shifting to the correct
paradigm itself, like the shifting of all paradigms, is a minor emergence.
(For example, what is so major in shifting from a geocentric to a
heliocentric viewpoint of our solar system?) However, it is the discarding
of all the vested interests which make the paradigm shift so profound.
(For example, suddenly the astrologers losse their jobs to the
astronomers.) If the conservation of these vested interests is so
important to prevent the paradigm shift, then let it be tough luck.
> Take care,
The same to all of you - and let us try to avoid tough luck! It is indeed
tough luck to trust in something which is not trustworthy.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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