Mnr AM de Lange wrote:
> Thus, although I am delighted with what you have written and respect it
> very much, it is incomplete with respect to different paradigms. We are
> now entering the terrain of the seventh essentiality of creativity which I
> call "paradigm-openness" - the joker card among the seven pack. Keeping a
> cool head and balanced act through a jungle of paradigms is for me one of
> the most difficult things to do. Thus, when asking you to qualify how you
> will avoid self-deception and thus negative tamperings, I know that I am
> asking you a very difficult thing.
>
> > This doesn't eliminate being direct--even
> > being directive--when the need arises--but it does eliminate the need to
> > control other people's lives and behavior through deceptive or indirect
> > means.
>
> Now you are speaking - control of other people's lives. I hate it and I
> try to avoid it at all costs. But, what is control of other people's
> lives. How much does your and my description of it correspond?
Thank you, At, for your sophisticated and gentle conversation. I've
enjoyed your postings on manipulation, and your succinct summary on
entropy, chaos and dissipative structures as they apply to organizations.
"Keeping a cool head" and balancing oneself "through the jungle of
paradigms," is indeed the difficult path set before us. With regards to
self-deception and manipulating our surroundings (including the people
around us), I think many of us are engaged in this behavior of projecting
ourselves and our mind upon the world we live in. By this, I mean I can
engage with my world by trying to recreate it in my image and by
attempting to change it to fit my thoughts. I may use each and all of the
senses you've described as manipulation in this "recreative" process.
Now, notice that I'm not writing about creating a new world or experience.
I'm specifically writing about recreating what I've got--a synthetic
approach to creativity, if you will accept that. This process encourages
me to "fix" things that belong to others. Fix them because I believe they
are wrong, because they don't fit well with my sense of rightness, of
fitness. Indeed, our history is filled with attempts at fixing things.
Each culture has its' own myths about the beings who exist to fix or alter
the parts of creation that they deem imperfect. I assert that this is
manipulation, and the consequences of these manipulations build up before
us as a Tsunami striding across the wide ocean of Gaia and humanity.
There is, in humanity, the ability and urge to create. Not to
recreate--but to create new worlds of images, dreams, thoughts. This act
seems to transcend the synthetic urge to regenerate the old world. When
people use their intelligence (whichever of the multiple varieties of
intelligence they use) to merge with creation, they seem more prone to
emerge with their own creativity. We each reach this stage in different
ways, at different points, in our lives. Sometimes we deny it--or it is
denied to us--and we continue to find ourselves immerging into fixing or
altering creation rather than creating new possibilities.
I'm aware of socio-paths, social misfits and others who don't seem to fit
in with the rest of us very well. I'm also aware of the dangers
associated with trying to fix, control or eliminate these people. I won't
dispute the need to insist on social norms, either, when those take
liberal account for differences. I am convinced, though, that people
don't need me to fix their lives or their behavior. Perhaps they need an
ear, a human touch--often they need someone to remove the obstacles or
blocks from their paths, so they can experience their own creativity.
Sometimes one of us is lost, and simply needs to be reconnected with their
life and their fellow human beings. It is extremely difficult to keep
centered and differentiated when so many people around you want to catalog
or label you--you are the heir to the "fixes" your ancestors and others
made in the world, to their manipulations, to their contributions to that
Tsunami. And, in the spirit of not trying to fix things, I won't offer a
fix for this--only the very pragmatic possibility of simply being aware at
every moment, of my surroundings, and how I interact with those
surroundings.
In the spirit of this rhetoric, I'll offer slightly different, and much
shorter, versions of what I just said.
Flowers, Too
Flowers, too, suffer death,
and yet they are guiltless.
So, too, our own being is pure
And suffers only grief,
Where we ourselves do not wish to understand.
What we call guilt
Is absorbed by the sun,
It comes to meet us out of the pure throats
Of flowers, fragrance and the moving gaze of children.
And as flowers die,
So we die, too,
Only the death of deliverance,
Only the death of rebirth.
Hermann Hesse (trans. James Wright)
Enlightenment
We couldn't stand what was empty, uninhabited. Often we would
move
the huge mirror to the river bank, a chair
into a tree, and at other times, conversely,
a huge tree into the dining room. Then we would hear
the gunfire behind the sheepfold, late, at dusk,
and though known and expected, it would always startle us--
this is our confirmation for the proper placing of words.
Yannis Ritsos (trans. Edmund Keeley)
regards,
Doc
--Richard C. "Doc" Holloway Your partner for workforce development Visit me at http://www.thresholds.com/community/learnshops/index.html Or e-mail me at <mailto:learnshops@thresholds.com> Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2361 Phone: 01 360 786 0925 Olympia, WA 98507 USA Fax: 01 360 709 4361
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