Dear Organlearners,
Dan Chay <chay@alaska.net> writes
>I began to experiment with that idea -- to learn is to create -- and
>the adjoints, funny enough, were happiness and delight.
>
>Soon after I decided to pick up my pace with regard to understanding
>At, thus to reread his posts, while trying to do creating-learning and
>learning-creating.
Greetings Dan,
You have mentioned that happiness is indeed an adjoint of creative
emergences. But there are also other adjoints. Curiosity is one of them.
You have not "named" it formally, but you have surely discussed it
informally! I have included part of your discussion to illustrate it.
Few know that the articulation of the named concept "creativity" (and not
create, creature, creation, creative) is essentially post WWII. The word
creativity was seldom used before WWII and only a couple of times in the
previous century. The emergence of the named concept "creativity" probably
began with Henry Bergson's theory of "creative evolution" early this
century. In the same period two other philosophers, C Lloyd Morgan and S
Alexander, formulated their theory of "emergent evolution" based on the
concept "emergence". Thus, although the naming of "emergence" has a slight
advantage in time over "creativity", both happened essentially in the 20th
century.
However, we should never confuse the formal naming of a concept with our
informal awareness of the concept. The informal awareness of a concept
precedes its formal naming. Sometimes the time lapse between these two can
span many centuries, different nations and even cultures. An interesting
example is St Paul of the Bible. Although never naming them as "adjoints
of emergences", observe how much he had to say on these adjonts in many of
his letters. Furthermore, his famous passage in 1 Cor 13 clearly
illustates how much he is aware of love as the highest level of emergence
for the human spirit.
When the converse happens, i.e. the formal name (note, not naming) of a
concept precedes the informal awareness to it, many serious problems
arise. These problems arise when people try to inverse the arrow of time
(entropy production). The arrow of time is from "content" (like the
informal awareness to a concept) to "form" (like the formal naming of a
concept). One problem is that people begin to deal in names rather than
what they stand for -- the infamous buzz words. Since they do not know
what the names stand for, they apply these names to other things which
they are informally aware of. Eventually, when they have to name their
informal awareness of the things which the names originally stood for,
confusion results.
One of the differences between organisational learning and individual
learning is that in the former we learn that the informal awareness
precedes the formal naming. We also learn how to perceive the informal
awareness of concepts in another person rather than to insist that the
person should use the formal names of such concepts. We even have to allow
for the fact that a person may have immense tacit knowledge on a concept.
It means that the person has never before articulated the concept in words
and thus not even has named it before. The same applies to each of us.
Dan, you also write:
>Trying to work with At's learning and creativity theory, I would
>imagine that organizational learning and individual learning are
>in some ways different, and some ways the same.
(snip)
>I would expect organizational learning to be more complex. Thus,
>I would expect organizational learning cycles in general to take
>more linear time than individual learning cycles.
Yes, it is very important to realise that the more complex any system
becomes, the slower things happen on its highest emergent level. In other
words, the more complex a system becomes, the longer its whole creation
time. On another thread we are having a dialogue on the topic of time and
what it entails like rythm, synchronisation, etc. Is it not fantastic how
all these topics connect into one whole? But let us focus here on creation
time and what it has to say for "How does a Nation learn?"
The nation is one of the most complex LOs possible. Thus national learning
happens very slowly as you have articulated so aptly with respect to the
American nation. A very serious problem usually arises with national
learning. The creation time of its cycles is in the order of centuries
while for individual learning it is in the order of decades. As a result
the continuity of national learning is often disrupted by opportunistic
politicians. Thus the newer generations frequently have to go back to
square one, making the same learning mistakes as the previous generations.
It is, what Jan Smuts, the father of holism, would have called national
insanity. You describe its consequences vividly by:
>I doubt that an ubuntu index ever would have been very high
>nationwide in the USA, though. The trail of tears in all its
>branches,
>iterations, reverberations, and reflections, continues to this day.
It also applies to South Africa, but on a much worse scale.
These discontinuities in national learning have a disastrous feedback on
individual learning with respect to emergent learning. (We have to
distinguish between emergent learning which happens at the edge of chaos
and digestive learning which happens close to equilbrium. Both, first
emergent leaning and then digestive learning, constitutes one cycle in the
vortex of learning.) In emergent learning two or more concepts have to
connect effectively for a higher order concept to emerge. (See the
essentiality fruitfulness.) The first connection is seldom effective. And
when it does happen, it is often impaired, becoming less sound (stable) or
applicable (adaptive). In such cases the emergence has to be repeated
until it is free of imperfections. When this improvement does not happen
on the level of organisational learning, it signals that there is no
incentive for improved emergences on the level of individual learning.
I feel that it is important to maintain a healthy harmony between learning
individuals and learning organisations. Learning individuals is a
prerequisite to learning organisations. But too much stress on individual
learning (individualisation) impairs organisational learning. A sad
example are the majority of higher educational institutions -- a topic
much discussed several months ago. The converse is also possible. Too much
stress on organisational learning can lead in nationhood to traditionalism
and nationalism which are very destructive on individual learning. The
recent history of apartheid South Africa is a clear example.
>I see both individual and organizational scapegoating (and
>blaming, labeling, stereotyping) used both as excuse (minimizing,
>rationalizing, denying, and shifting the burden) and as pretext
>(opportunistic scapegoating, predator/prey).
How right you are. Again, much can be learnt here in South Africa.
Apartheid, a political ideology for almost 50 years, did much harm to our
country. But since the emergence of New South Africa in 1994, apartheid
has been used more and more as a reason to motivate the existance of most
unsolved problems and the creation of new ones through mismanagement,
corruption and nepotism. This scapegoating is extremely detrimental to the
well being of the South African nation, leading to a decline in individual
and social responsibilities and an increase in violence and crime.
Everything goes provided you can "blame it on apartheid".
>I expect scapegoating increases the rate of entropy production
>while simultaneously impairing essentialities. Entropy occurs
>when, say, we transform our body's energy to words. The force?
>Emotional potential, a quality. The flux? Words, a quantity. At
>a national level the force might be an executive decision. The
>flux might be agency, diplomatic, or military mobilization.
??
>Grins and best wishes,
Dan, we should never underestimate the role of opportunistic politicians
and self-centered clergy in undermining the learning nation. Deep down
they fear learning individuals and learning organisations alike because
they strip them from the power which they want to yield over what they
call their subjects or nation when they finally take to office. They are
clever in creating entropic forces (policies) and fluxes (rhetoric), but
fools in maintaining a constructive course in the evolution of the nation.
When the consequences of their misbehaviour come to light, they are first
in excusing themselves by putting the blame on others.
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
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>