At, thank you for your contribution to the discussion of faith and the LO.
As always I find your contributions provide me with much to react to and
reflect on.
I have struggled with this thing called faith ever since my early teens
and am struggling still. For many years I called myself an atheist until
a good friend and colleague commented that he was not sure he would have
the arrogance to be an atheist. So, I must be a committed agnostic. To
make sense of this statement, I will offer the following:
"The important thing, Kirkegaard argued, is not the objective question of
whether God in fact exists, but the subjective truth of one's own
commitment in the face of an objective uncertainty." (I have lost the
source of this).
This quote helps to put some of my belief in perspective. But added to it
is my firmly held conviction that as lifelong learners we must allow for
the possibility of all possibilities. (This may be the important part of
wholeness?) Thus, if I am an atheist, I do not allow the possibility of
the existence of God and am therefore arrogant in my exclusion. As an
agnostic, I am able to continue exploring my beliefs while accepting
others' beliefs (as beliefs, not truths), providing room for dialogue and
the emergence of shared meaning.
Further,
"The fundamental premise of constructivism is that we humans are self
regulating organisms who live from the inside out. As a philosophical
counterpoint to naive realism, constructivism suggests that we are
proactive co-creators of the reality to which we respond. Underlying this
concept is that perception is an active process in which we 'bring forth
distinctions'. It is our idiosyncratic distinctions which form the
structure of the world(s) which each of us inhabits." (Alan Stewart -
http://bart.northnet.com.au/~pfell/construc.html )
To me this means that we co-create our world through sharing the
development of meaning, (make explicit our "weltaunschaung") with others
with whom we interact. Thus, while existentialist in character, the
co-creation limits the insularity of our created worlds.
This notion of faith of course extends beyond belief in God, and as At
argues, has important implications for learning, organisational and
personal. " We may think of faith as a first order emergent of learning
and as a second order emergent of creativity."
In my reading of Critical Systems Thinking, and related ideas it is true
that I have not come across any explicit discussion of faith as systemic
belief. But without stretching the point too far, I am of the opinion
that "faith" in learning is a necessary condition for sustainable systems
and is thus implicit in much of the discussion of systems. In this light,
I believe that faith is an integral part of the learning organisation as a
sustainable system; faith that changes with changing "subjective truth[s]
of one's own commitment in the face of an objective uncertainty".
Thanks for the space to think "aloud".
(At, while it is true that the written dialogue has more permanence over
the spoken dialogue, I do think that this can add to dialogue by allowing
room for reflection - we can always revisit the conversation for further
reflection and perhaps contribution.)
Still learning,
/Les
-- Leslie Lax Kelowna BCe-mail: leslax@cnx.net web: http://members.cnx.net/leslax
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>