The terrible bomb explosions at the US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam
(Tanzania) and Nairobi (Kenia) compelled me to write. My heart goes
out to all the innocent people hurt and killed by these horrible
incidents. Their lifes have been changed irreversibly. Many victims
will never recover from it.
Soon afterwards calls went out for justice and retribution -- setting
an example which will end further incidents like these. But will it
all end with setting such an example? I fear not. Why? The mere
reward of $2 million which has been offered. A reward of rather $2
billion (peanuts to the US) would have signalled more convincingly.
But let me stop with this simple argument
Let me rather draw a lesson from a different incident so that we can
keep our heads cool and our hearts warm. You all know about
Apartheid, the official policy of forced race segregation in South
Africa. Apartheid was designed to prevent the black people from
hurting the white people. But apartheid hurt the majority of black
people. The majority of white people who voted for Apartheid were
aware of some hurt, but were unaware of the intensity and scale of
this hurt. The Rest Of The World (ROTW) could not understand it. So
the ROTW decided to send white South Africans a message - punish them
by boycotts and sanctions until their own hurt was so immense that
they will give up Apartheid. The ROTW knew that black South Africans
would get hurt just as much, but they thought that such hurt were for
their own good.
Gradually a culture of hurt grew among South Africans. The ROTW
closed their eyes to it, saying that even this was for the good of
the future of South Africa. The ROTW went even further, promising
South Africans that once Apartheid was ended, they will make right
all hurt inflicted on South Africans. Well, Apartheid ended de facto
in 1992 and de juro in 1994. The ROTW even awarded De Klerk and
Mandela with the Noble prize for peace - something to sooth their
conscience with.
But the culture of hurt in South Africa did not end. It is growing by
the day as reported by the news media. What is even worse, the ROTW
says that it cannot make right its hurting during the Apartheid years
because this very culture of hurt is now even hurting their business
interests in South Africa. The amplified backlash of hurting which
the ROTW indiscrimantely dished out, is now hurting them too much to
honour their promises. The message of the ROTW to all South Africans
is now becoming very clear -- unless you South Africans revert and
end this growing culture of hurting, we will not be interested in you
again.
But there is a deeper message which is also becoming clear -- one
that very few people become aware of.
Save yourselves because we cannnot save you nor can we save
ourselves with the culture of hurt which we make so much use
of.
The first lesson which I want to bring under your attention is:
Sending a message, using hurt, to tell other people that they
have been hurting you, only creates a culture of hurt, but will
sure as hell never revert and end the hurting.
What surpises me daily is how difficult it is for people to learn
this first lesson. Here is one example.
We now have a major strike in the automotive industry just as in the
US. Our country as a whole cannot afford it. Yet the unionised
workers insist that they need to hurt management by loss of income
so that management become aware of the workers' hurt. Managers
insist that they have to hurt the workers in retaliation by loss of
wages so that workers can come to their senses. In the end, when
everybody has been hurt enough, they will negotiate an agreement.
Sadly, it will only allow them some rest in order to gain enough
strength to write a new chapter of hurting.
Even in my own family I frequently need to point out this lesson to
my children. My wife and I have learnt this lesson many years ago.
But our children (the youngest 22 years old) still have to learn
this lesson over and over again. Why? It is this terrible culture of
hurt which they are exposed to. They still cannot manage in this
culture of hurt to keep their minds cool and their hearts warm.
Please face it -- the US hurts the Rest Of The World unprecedented in
intensity and scale. And when some factions in the ROTW overcome
their fear of the mighty and self-righteous US, they send back
messages of hurt.
The second lesson which I want to bring under your attention is:
We can definitely save ourselves by realising that hurt is the
result of destructive creativity and that by becoming
constructively creative we can prevent such hurt.
It does not surprise me anymore how difficult it is for people to
learn also this second lesson. It is one complex lesson in which all
seven essentialities of creativity play a crucial role. I can
summarise the essentialities as follows:
Liveness: we have to harmonise with changes by becoming different
beings ourselves.
Sureness: we have to discover ourselves.in terms of the world
outside us..
Wholeness: we have to take all parts of the lesson into account in
order to regain our authenticity.
Fruitfulness: we will have to make effective contact even with what
appears to be impossible.
Scarceness: we will have to share so that there is enough for
everybody.
Otherness: we will have to use diversity as the heart beat to get the
best out of each of us.
Openness: we will have to open up to others as we want them to
open up to us.
Although crucial to constructive creativity, the seven essentialities
are not enough. They merely determine the "form" of creativity. The
"form" cannot exist without "content". The "content" concerns the
push-pull action (complementing) of chaos and order. New higher
orders can only emerge when the chaos (diversity of becoming) of
present orders reaches their breaking points.
The breaking point is called a bifurcation because it can lead into
either a constructive emergence of higher order or a destructive
immergence of lower order. Constructive creativity which tries to
bypass bifurcations is impossible. The newly emerged higher order has
to grow into maturity before it can give birth again to yet another
new, higher order. It happens by repeating the cycle using force-flux
(field-flow) pairs to create new chaos.
We experience the destructive immergences to lower orders as hurt.
We experience the contructive emergences to higher orders as bliss.
The highest order to emerge into is that of unconditional love. The
bliss associated with it makes it possible for us to stop the
ping-pong passing of messages of hurt, to endure the hurt and thus
revert and end the culture of hurt by becoming constructively
creative.
Let us stop this hurting because it hurts too much.
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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