Dear Organlearners,
Don Dwiggins d.l.dwiggins@computer.org writes:
>Tacking a bit, I'd like to pick up on one of the three faces of
>vitality mentioned (creativity, joy and love). At has written at
>length about two of these; I'd like to hear from him (or indeed
>anyone) on the third: what's the relation of joy to creativity and
>love? If joy is missing, how are the others impaired? At wrote
>about the powerful force arising from the tension between love
>and hate. Is there a complement to joy that can create an such
>an entropic force?
Greetings Dwig,
Yes, words like love and joy go hand in hand with "constructive"
creativity. Joy, for me, is the feeling which I get after any
constructively creative accomplishment, whether it be mine or that of
anybody else. Joy, for me, has many facets like happiness, delight,
cheer, exhilarate, truimph and enrapture. Curiosity and hope, like
joy, are other adjoints of any constructively creative accomplishment.
They also each has many facets. All these adjoints are very important
to my spirituality.
Few people consider creativity to have also a dark side to it. But my
spirituality makes me also sensitive to such a thing as "destructive"
creativity. Its adjoints are sorrow and ignorance rather than joy and
curiosity. These negative adjoints in conjunction with the positive
adjoints create strong entropic forces within me. For example, sorrow
and joy form an entropic force. Sorrow is the pusher and joy the
puller. Since Leo made me aware how the negative pusher disperses
while the positive puller concentrates, I have observed countless
examples on our local TV news bulletins how sorrow pushes people away
from each other when it is not counter balanced with joy.
If joy-sorrow is the entropic force, what is the corresponding flux?
It is the very creative outcomes leading to joy or sorrow. In the case
of joy they (as higher order emergents) are offered as gifts. But in
the case of sorrow they (as lower order immergents) are imposed as
penalties. Whatever the case, both the force and flux leads to an
increase in entropy. This is manifested automatically as chaos
(diversity of becoming). For example, observe the bewilderment on a
person's face when receiving a gift or inflicted with a penalty.
Here in South Africa we are now experiencing great extremes in both
joy and gifts as well as sorrow and penalties. It happens in all walks
of life. A serious concern is that the destructive outcomes seems to
outnumber the constructive outcomes by far. What ought to surprise
you, is how vulnerable and weak our organisations are to the negative
adjoints of destructive creativity. Banks, factories, businesses,
institutions and even government agencies seems to be powerless in
this degradation of spirituality. But it should not be surprising.
During the apartheid era creativity was curtailed to avoid ideological
confrontations while spirituality was considered to be the domain of
the official religion. Now we have to rely much more on creativty
without the experiences to do so while there is no spiritual model to
emulate any more. In other words, we have to walk a path which has
become unknown to us.
>To take a position: joy is the feedback signal that lets you
>know when you're getting it right; to paraphrase the Shaker
>words a bit, "coming down where you ought to be"...
Yes, these adjoints (postive or negative) are most important signals
of our creative accomplishments. They are, for me, more important than
external judications. Even our languages are very rich in these
internal signals. But we will have to learn how to become aware of
them and understand their meaning.
In my mother tongue Afrikaans we have two groups of words related to
joy. The one group contains words like "vreugde" (happiness),
"verheuging" (rejoicing) en "blydskap" (gladness). They are used for
joy in a *heavenly* manner. The other group containes word like
"plesier" (pleasure), "genot" (delight) and "lekker" (nice, fair, ??).
They are used for joy in an *earthly* manner. Unfortunately, in the
history of Afrikaners, far too many had the skewed notion that the
heavenly group defines pure spirituality while the *earthly* group
defiles it. However, spirituality cannot hang in nothing. It has to
emerge with roots, trunk and branches. Thus the earthly group is just
as important as the heavely group. People seem to realise this, but
they neglect the role of harmony (balance). Whereas the heavenly group
was favoured in the past, the earthly group is now favoured as a
counter reaction. The role of harmony in spirituality is something
which, in my opnion, is under estimated.
Here is some notes on the word "lekker". It is frequently used by
English speaking South Africans in their English because English does
not have an equivalent for it. It has a rich diversity of meanings.
For example,
"lekker kry" = thrilled with joy,
"lekker maak" = take pleasure,
"lekker voel" = fit as a fiddle, and
"lekker ruik" = pleasant smell.
But it is in composite words in which this "lekker" really shows its
satirical power. For example:
"lekkerbek" = gourmet. ("bek"=mouth)
"lekkergeloof" = accommodating faith
"lekkerjeuk" scabies ("jeuk"=itch)
"lekkerlyf" tipsy ("lyf"=body)
"lekkerplek" purgatory ("plek"=place)
"lekkervriend" opportunist ("vriend"=friend)
>Wishing you all love, joy, and creativity...
The same to all of you from me.
I have not yet written in this contribution on love itself. To use
Dwig's words in a modified way:
love is the feedback signal that lets you
know when you're living in harmony with
reality.
Love is the highest ordered emergence of all. Hence love pulls
everything into focus. The bliss of joy is when it is experienced in
love. Since constructive creativity culminates in love, love is the
only power which can deal effectively with destructive creativity. But
this power is not readily available to us because love does not emerge
automatically. We have to take care of love more than anything else.
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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