Dear Organlearners,
Artur Silva <artsilva@individual.eunet.pt> sent me a copy of his
contribution which got lost in my abscence. I wish to reply to it as
follows:
He writes:
>There is something that I find very interesting in this
>message: "In order to learn quickly, we need to raise
>conflits quickly". Let me put it in a different way: in
>some cases, we need to stimulate conflit, not to avoid
>it ( my words, not hers...). I find this ideia interesting because
> it is counter-intuitive. Let me develop it a bit further.
Artur, in my own Systems thinking I distinguish between two types of
creative (irreversible self-organising) learning:
* "emergent learning" which happens at the edge of chaos
when a bare new concept emerge.
* "digestive learning" which happens close to equilibrium
when the new concept grow to maturity.
As I understand conflicts ("con"=with, "fligo"=strike), they result
from irreconcilable "differences in opinion" because of premature
judgements. The "differences in opinion" themselves can already
function as "entropic forces" to drive the learning system to the edge
of chaos. The premature judgements and thus fundamentalism which
results from it, are usually not conducive to emergences,
especially because any resulting emergent does not resort under the
judgement. For example, a person (who is also a mother) can be judged
upon her deeds, but the daughter (who is an emergent) cannot be judged
for the deeds of the mother.
This is also the case for one of the articles of faith of
Christianity. A person who has been reborne in Jesus Christ will not
be judged according to his/her old life.
>Gene refers to problems that the majority of us have
>also found in organizations we have worked with. But,
>interestingly, all of them are about "negative conflits".
>I wonder if one could not find also experiences of
>"positive conflits", I mean, conflits of ideias and mental
>models, where a positive outcome would arise.
Conflicts are negative in themselves. It happens when entropy
producing force-flux pairs operate while one or more of the seven
essentialities are impaired. (In warfare, as I will explain in my
book, the strategy is to impair them willfully.) Thus conflicts leads
to immergences rather than emergences.
In other words, "negative conflicts" are a toutology.
One can certainly experience what you denote as "positive conflicts".
They are entropy prouding force-flux pairs operating under conditions
vafourable to emergences. It means that all seven essentialities must
be sufficiently mature for the emergences required. But I will be very
careful to use the term "positive conflicts" because of its internal
confliction! In a few languages it may work like my own mother tongue
Afrikaans. We make frequently use (intuitively or tacitly) of
conflicting word pairs to force emergences. For example, we often say
"verskriklik mooi" (horrible beautiful) or "vrek lewendig" (deadly
alive). It is impossible to translate these conflicting word pairs in
a language like English in which they have never been used like that.
>Let me change now for what seem to be a different problem:
>in his introduction to "the *deemster* problem" At wrote:
>>In other words, even when we get the gut feeling that we are
>>very sure of the macroscopic (complex) nature of the "deman"
>>of the other person, let us still avoid "judgement" and rather
>>promote the "dialogue".
>I am sure that At always try to "avoid judgement"; I also think
>that this is the dominant attitude in this list and generally within
>many LOs. And I find it is ok. But sometimes I wonder if with
>that attitude we are not avoiding positive conflits, and doing the
>contrary to "raise conflits quickly". I wonder if with that we are
>not loosing an opportunity to learn quickly. I wonder if we are
>not loosing an important tool to learn when we systematically
>avoid words like "criticism", "discordance", "disagreement", etc.
Artur, in my reply to Winfried Dressler on the 5 Chinese Elements, I
tried to explain that a "deemless dialogue" becomes a pure entropic
flux (flow). Together with a difference in opinion which acts as an
entropic force, both will produce entropy. I do not how it is with all
you people, but I myself am capable of observing the difference in
opinion without having to judge which side of the difference is
correct and true. Differences are sufficient for me.
But I wonder if our comprehension of judgement is the same? Allow me
to formulate how I understand judgement from my own point of view. I
must admit that I had great diffculties to emerge from my previous
understanding of judgement.
Judgement is the binary evaluation of any creation. Do I try to pull
wool over your eyes with hype or sophisticated words? No. The word
"binary" means TWO cases (classes, possibilities, labels) -- either
the one case, or the other case, but not both cases nor any other
(zeroth, third, fourth, ...) case. The word "evaluation" means an
irreversible (firm, undoubtable, unique, positive) connection of the
creation to be judged with only one of the two cases. The word
"creation" means that both the becoming (process, means) and its being
(structure, outcome) are involved in the evaluation.
Because of the binary nature of a judgement, many duals can be
involved. For example:
true / false for thruth
good / bad for morality
yes / no for answers
right / wrong for actions
Sadly, often our evaluations are not such irreversible connections as
we wished them to be. For example, we judge some statement to be true,
only to discover afterwards that it is false. Why? Again it is the
seven essentialities operating at the root. For example, we judge
something to be true before we had the whole picture to observe
(wholeness), or we judge something to be immoral without having
connected to it (fruitfulness).
Furthermore, the "two extremes of a spread" or even "complementary
duals" can also be invoked as dialectic classes, causing unjust
discrmination (labeling, stereotyping) WHEN ONE OF THE CLASSES IS
PREFERED, for example:
man / woman (what about genderless living objects)
child / adult (what about adolloscents)
white / black (what about all the other colours)
plant / animal (what about virusses)
being / becoming (complementary)
creator / creature (complementary)
physical / spiritual (complementary)
nature /culture (complementary)
evolution / revolution (complementary)
individual / collective (complementary)
Sadly, the majority of -isms (chauvinism, feminism, ..., individualism
and collectivism) derives from these preferances among duals (extremes
or complements). Thus we can see how much of our mental models become
fixed, how make a dialecticism out of dualities.
Why do we prefer one of two classes rather than seeking harmony in
spread or complementarity? Why do we seek to be unique in dualities of
our own making? Why do we want to judge at all, i.e evaluate all
creations (even ourselves) in a binary fashion? We need we know is any
creation still has a creative future? Why do we jump so easily to
conclusions? Why did Karl Marx had such a great influence on people's
thinking?
Questions such as these occupied my mind for many years without
getting answers. But once I have discovered that "entropy production"
also occurs in the abstract world of mind so that creativity is the
result of "entropy production", and also have discovered the seven
essentialities of creativity so that they help us to create
constructively, my systems thinking began to develop to such an extent
that I began to find answers to all these questions. I know that even
my questions are difficult to comprehend so that my answers may be
incomprehensible to you, by I will try to answer them.
We judge because we want to know about the future of any creation, not
its past nor its present. The past is gone forever while we cannot do
anything more for the present because soon it will also be the past.
This is the irreversible course of time -- the consequences of
"entropy production". Just as in the past was and the present is, the
future will be rich in ordinate bifurcations - dual forkings into
either constructive emergences of a higher order or destructive
immergences of a lower order. (Ordinate means different orders.) It is
our experiences of these ordinate bifurcations which compels us to
judge, to evaluate in a binary fashion, preffing the one rather than
the other. We do not have to seek for uniqueness -- it is typical for
emergences. The more complex an emergence, the more time it takes and
the less common it is. Unfortunately, we have become so obsessed with
judgements that we even sacrify the essentiality
"identity-categoricity" (sureness) to our judgements.
We should try not to confuse judgement with sureness. If we force
dialecticism on sureness like Karl Marx did, then we will eventually
run into big trouble. Sureness is not having only two categories, one
with whom I have to identify myself with. Please study again my notes
on the essentiality sureness.
>Even if I am not a specialist there ( and At can correct
>me, if he wants) I would think that conflits played an
>important role in the evolution of species. And that they
>play an important role in all the processes of emergence.
>Can't we be loosing an important way to promote
>emergence, and becoming whit the attitude of always
>avoiding conflit and "judgement"?
>
>Thank you for having followed this message until the end,
>avoidind your judgements about the "language barrier",
>and the fact that it is probably "politically incorrect" in
>the LO context.
>
>Waiting for your comments, judgements and criticisms...
Artur, if we look at physical NATURE, we will see that its business is
diversity -- it uses diversity to produce even more diversity. How?
Prigogine gave the answer after many years of painstaking work - an
answer for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize (1977) in chemistry.
Diversity leads to differences. Some differences can act as entropy
producing forces. Once these forces are couple to their corresponding
fluxes, each force-flux pair adds to the "entropy production" of the
universe. In any local region where sufficient entropy is produced so
that not all of it can be used to disperse energy in a chaotic
fashion, the remainder of the entropy is used to concentrate energy in
local structures. These local structures appear through ordinate
bifurcations, either constructive emergences (structures of higher
order) or destructive immergences (structures of lower order). But
what about CULTURE?
I sense in your sensitivity to conflicts a tacit sensitivity to
entropy producing forces. Prigogine gave an answer for physical
nature. But do these forces also exist in culture? Do they exist in
the abstract world of human mind? What role do they play in creating
our confusions? Can we learn anything from this chaos-order business?
Artur, what you will get from me is only my participation in the
dialogue. I try not to hand out judgements. Each of you have opinions
different from mine and are capable enough to perceive these
differences in opinions. I myself use such differences as entropic
forces to produce entropy within me which is then manifested first as
chaos and then order. Since I know how dangerous it is for a system to
be innundated with extra entropy from the outside is, in other words,
how dangerous it is if a system does not produce self its entropy, I
am careful not to blast you with the chaos in my mind. What I rather
try to do, is to formulate my opinion as rich as possible by using all
seven essentialities. Hence, owing to your different opinions, you can
also experience the entropy production by tension-flow pairs, then
experience the chaos (confusion) which will automatically result from
it and finally, when you produce entropy fast enough to be driven to
the edge of chaos, experience ordinate bifurcations. If they develop
into constructive emergences, you will be experiencing emergent
learning
This experential (or first) level of your knowledge is very important
because the tacit (or second) level will have to emerge from it, again
by emergent learning. Your tacit knowledge are things which you know,
but never have expressed it yourself. It helps you to recognise things
which I am writing about as if I am expressing your tacit knowledge.
But neither I nor anyone else can do it -- you will have to express it
yourSELF so that your formal (or third) level of knowledge can emerge.
This is another important reason why we must have a dialogue -- to be
able to express our tacit knowledge. Fpr example, this is what you did
with your argument for conflicts.
But there is also the sapient (or fourth) level of knowledge to emerge
into. For example, is the use of the word "conflict" wise? Is this the
best word for which we actually try to express. Is my technical word
"entropic force" wise since few know formally of Prigogine's work?
Furthermore, you (with Portugese), I (with Afrikaans), Winfried
Dressler (with German), Winfired Deijman (with Dutch) and some others
who do not have English as mother tongue, have a neverending struggle
to find the correct English word for a tacit concept which we try to
express. That is why we plead to all organlearners to have patience
with our use of English. My trouble is even worse - I have a typing
dyslexy. But because I prefer WordPerfect and not MS Word (since the
latter does not have the option to make its hidden formatting codes
visible), I cannot use a spell checker.
Why do I prefer to see these hidden codes (like cryptic messages in
the < > brackets of HTML)? When I write something very complex with
many and diverse formatting (commanding) codes, frequent changes
(editying) to the document will leave many of these hidden codes
intact without any contents in them to act upon. Unless I can weed out
this "commanding baggage", it becomes eventually so incoherent and
inconsistent that the word processor cannot handle it any more and
thus "freezes up". Many days of painstaking work will thus be lost
forever. Frequent savings, usually a blessing, may also cause the last
saved copy to be beyond repair. Thus I have to begin again at square
one. This is extremely frustrating for me. If I am not allowed to see
that these hidden codes do not occur in the document, how will I know
that they will not be there to prepare a catastrophe?
I have written this last paragraph to use it as a metaphor. It is wise
not to carry "commanding baggage" around because it causes
inconsistency and incoherency. As far as I can perceive it, this does
not happen on the experential and tacit levels of knowledge. But it
does happen frequently on the formal level of knowledge, causing
severe tensions (forces) and hence probable conflicts. I believe they
complicate our confusions, complications we could well do without.
Thus there is need for criticisms (identifying such commanding
baggage) and judgements (ending their future). But we must use it
sparingly in the "world outside us" because we will have to employ
destructive creativity to do so. In the "world inside us" we can do it
much more frequently, bit we must take care not to let it develop in a
compulsive obsession.
Although not avtually related to this thread, I want to use the
metaphor of the hidden formatting codes to point out to a very
important function of systems thinking which is seldom even mentioned
in managerial science. It is called the taxonomical function of
systems thinking, something which plays an important role in
biological systematics. The taxonomical function of Systems Thinking
allows one to become sensitive to possible hidden things or missing
pieces in the puzzle and thus to begin a seach for them. I have used
this taxonomical function of Systems Thinking with great advantage.
How about you fellow organlearners?
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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