Dear Organlearners,
Winfried Deijmann <winfried@universal.nl (W.M. Deijmann)>
wrote 10 days ago (forgive me the longer than usual qoute):
> Allow me to add my one cent thoughts on the issue.
>
> Can organizations think?
> Do organizations have a will?
> Can organizations feel?
> Can they act and look around?
...snip...
> Without access to my nerves and senses, without a proper rythmical working
> blood- and breathing system, without my limbs and metabolismsystem I
> cann't learn. If one of these three systems fail I die! Who came up with
> this ridiculous concept that learning and remebering is solely an activity
> of the brains and the senses? Where does the expression 'learning by
> heart' in that case come from? Just a metaphor, or is there a lot of
> forgotten ancient wisdom hidden in it?
Winfried, this "ridiculous concept that learning and remebering is solely
an activity of the brains and the senses" has developed in an age very
insensitive to holism - an age which paid tribute to fragmentarism. Your
qualification "ridiculous" made me very happy because I do not consider it
merely as ridiculous, but consider it deadly because it will exterminate
(at least) the human race if we keep on embracing this concept.
[Holism means "the sum is more than its parts". Thus holism can be equated
as "holism = more + sum = emergence + wholeness". I refer to the
"wholeness" as the essentiality "associativity-monadicity". It is one of
the seven essentialities of creativity. If one or more of the seven
essentialities are impaired, emergence will be impaired or will even not
happen any more. Any "-ism" is a general pattern which, although it is a
necessary pattern, is overemphasized to the detriment of other necessary,
general patterns. This can also be true of holism when the other six
essentialities are neglected.]
I wish I could urge you to go further than the body. Learning does not
merely depend on the harmonious functioning of all the body's organs
whether big or small, single or multiple. Learning also depends on our
physical environment and what we derive from it: foods, clothes, houses,
etc. Not the least, it also depends on our spiritual environment and its
nourishments: care, friendship, love, etc. To summarise: we have to think
monadically (holistically) to improve on our learning efforts.
> If we want to treat organizations as Learning and therefor LIVING
> organizations, we have to accept them as living entities, with a living
> soul, not as a metaphor but as a FACT and treat them that way. If so, we
> have to use human concepts, perceptions, idea's etc. that are in coherence
> with that. IMHO most of the literature on management and organizational
> issues can be trashed as a consequence of this.
Again I wish I could urge you to go further. You stress that living
entrities have living souls. You are still thinking anthropo= morphically,
i.e. in terms of human based metaphores. Allow me to show you why. Let us
think of different souls. The souls of horses differ from the souls of
dogs or fishes. Do only animals have souls? What about plants in which
animal neural systems are absent. Yet, by living among the trees of a
forest we encounter different souls than among a patch of succulents in
the desert. Even inanimate soils and climates have different souls.
Compare a thunderstorm in the desert to a misty drizzle in the mountains.
One way in which I can articulate the universe of which I am a part of, is
to say that it is "a web of interacting living entities each having a
unique living soul". Another way is to say that it is "dissipative system
made up of subsystems capable of emergences and disgestions, thus changing
its complex make-up".
In terms of the latter articulation, the basic question now becomes:
"Is there anything dissipative about learning so that emergences and
digestions can be observed in it?"
The next question then is:
"How do learning, as a dissipative phenomenon, differs between an
individual and an organisation?"
> We have to adjust our paradigma's on what a human being is in its essence.
> Are we willing to do so, including all the consequences?
What about shifting our paradigm to dissipation (entropy production)? The
essence of anything is that the "anything" cannot behave the same without
its essence. The main trouble with dissipation is that without it we
cannot behave at all. How is that for essence?
One consequence which I whish to stress once again, is that
emergences are not symmetric-reflexisive, but that rather asymmetric-
transitive. A fruit develops from a pollinated flower and not another
flower. A butterfly develops from a pupa and not another pupa. Our
children are never clones of ourselves. Thus we cannot expect
organisational learning to be a copy (symmetrical-reflexisive) of
individual learning. We have to look for different things which
emerge by organisational learning, things which do not emerge
by individual learning, eventhough it is individual who participate
in organisational learning.
It is ridiculous (symmetrical-reflexisive) to look for a brain (neural
system containing trillions of neurons) in a learning organsation. The
best we can do in a metaphoric sense, is to view the brains of its
individual members as "hyperneurons" of one "hyperneural system". Do we
need trillions of "hyperneurons" as in the case of trillions of neurons
for the individual's brain? No. Such a "hyperneural" system will already
emerge when two people love each other unconditionally.
Whereas knowledge is the main emergent in the case of individual learning,
the main emergent in the case of organisational learning is metanoia
[G:meta="beside", G:noeo="think"] as Senge describes it. Now what is this
thing beside thinking? It has many facets such as solicitude and
benevolence. In the cultures of Asia it is known as karma, in the cultures
of Southern Africa as ubuntu and in the cultures of Europe as communion.
It is to live in a loving harmony with other humans, nature and God. It is
as simple as that. An organisation without communion/ubuntu/karma is not a
learning organisation.
You will have to answer the question "Can Organisations Learn?" yourself.
Have you ever been part of any organisation (two or more people) from
which communion/ubuntu/karma has emerged? If not, does it mean that
organisational learning is not possible? Or is it possible that the most
important "ingredient" is absent, namely unconditional love.
Best wishes and much love for all of you this year!
--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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