Dear Organlearners,
Simon Buckingham <go57@dial.pipex.com> writes:
> At, I am sure that we all join you in condemning the terrorists there and
> everywhere- and anyone else that uses force to try to get their way. I did
> however think that the 2 MILLION response from the US was a very celver
> one to incentivize capture of the terrorists- it is a sum that would
> appeal to most people in Kenya, the US and elsewhere in the world. 2
> billion would be too much for what is hopefully a one-off incident, and 1
> million would be too little for many who may have information. Anyway, I
> thought it was quite a good response, lets hope that it bears fruit.
Greetings Simon.
You are correct about the incentive.
However, I will have to use a metaphor to make my point once again.
The sum of $2million dollars is a fine carrot to get a donkey
walking.
But the problem is that walking after a carrot is even hurting to the
donkey. I once saw a person doing just that. The donkey walked for a
hektometer or so and then suddenly started to trot in the direction
of a barbed fence. The man laughed, but I felt a cold feeling
creeping into my heart. I shouted a warning, but he could not hear me
because of his laughing. Close at the fence the donkey began to
gallop at full speed. After a second or two, it reached the fence,
made a slight turn and then ran parallel to the fence. The barbed
wire maimed the man for life before he could drop off to the other
side.
The problem is also that the carrot makes only one donkey walking.
Furthermore, the problem is that we deal with people, not donkeys.
All over the world people have been caught up in a culture of
hurting, the result of indiscrimante, destructive creativity. Do
they not need to emerge (rather than break lose) from that culture?
How much money will it cost to buy that emergence?
I believe that all the money in the world cannot buy spiritual
emergences. The one temptation of Jesus in the desert by the Devil
was exactly on this point. I can give you thousands of intellectual
emergences to check upon. How many of the break-throughs in all of
the academical world through the ages were the result of a direct
payment of money? Maybe everybody just forgot to document how
much money was offered and hence paid for each emergence.
The famous British mathematician Hardy once proposed a shocking toast
to mathematics which is worthless. Did he try to denigrate
mathematics? No. Mathematics is a strange art. First mathematicians
have to create whatever they want to prove as true. Neither the
mathematical creativity, nor the subsequent logical proofs can be
bought with money. Truths, just as morals, have no price tag.
However, saying that money cannot buy emergences, is not enough.
People need to emerge from the culture of hurting. Often it is our
very organisations which hurt us so much. Sometimes very little of
such an organisation can be saved. It is in this sense that I have
great respect for your methodology of unorganisation like the
methodology of down-sizing.
But we must take care not to fall in the trap of fundamentalism.
Jesus' last act in the garden of Getsemane before he was seized was
to restore the ear of Malthus to teach Peter that fundamentalism is
not the answer. (For more details on fundamentalism, see my answer to
Douglas Max <dmax@bellatlantic.net> on his contribution
"Hurting...was "It hurts" LO18874")
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>