Doc, thank you for your post. Sorry for the 3 separate responses on this
thread- but each is deserving of thought and attention.
> In this learning organization
> list, we often resemble a community (to my mind, at least), where the
> single-most important feature are the relationships that are realized,
> waning and waxing like all relationships do.
I am personally on this list for the ideas it stimulates in me- I find it
useful listening to my responses to the other peopl's ideas and opinions
on the list. This stimulates my learning. I am not deluded enough to
pretend to myself that I have a relationship with each person on this
list- or even any of them. It is great to not have to bother with all of
the transaction costs from sharing ideas that each of our individual
circumstances and histories implies. It does not bother me who does what
or where list members are based- it is their ideas that count- their
circumstances may well have comtributed to their ideas, but the ideas are
the paramount and the circustances secondary.
> I believe, though, that even those misanthropes or hermits who live apart
> still exist within the context of the larger community.
I believe that each and everyone of us is a product of our environment- I
am acutely aware that I am a "Thatcher's Child" and deeply influenced by
my education and family background. Where this is a positive environment,
we should be able to keep it, but where it is negative, we should be able
to transcend it. But there is also truth in the need to overcome
circumstances to realize full potential- being nationalistic in a global
world is wasteful. If we frame our goals within that which has been done
before, then they are gaols. The extent to which we can succeed is
dependent upon our ability to live apart from and out of context of the
larger community. This is deeply paraodoxical and I don't think I have the
vocabulary to articulate this instinct. I simply believe that if we
constrain ourselves to improving the ways things are, we will never
consider how things could be.
regards sincerely Simon Buckingham,
http://www.unorg.com
unorganization: business not busyness!
--Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>