Dear Organlearners,
Dennis Rolleston <Dennisr@ps.gen.nz> writes in reply to my:
>>A person's tacit knowledge is that knowledge which the person
>>has AND which that person SELF had never before articulated
>>in words or expressed by any other means. A person usually
>>recognises his/her tacit knowledge when ANOTHER person
>>articulates it. But this recognition does NOT cause the tacit
>>knowledge of the person to emerge into formal (objective)
>>knowledge because the person has NOT articulated it self.
>I am aware of the concept of tacit knowledge and the need to
>some how articulate it in order for it to grow/expand/bifurcate
>etc. And yet I find the practice of articulation some how difficult.
Greetings Dennis,
I became aware of the tacit level of knowledge in the early eighties. In
those days I called it "meta-epistemics". The mere act of giving it a name
was difficult for me. Speaking about it (articulating it) was also
difficult for me because other people accused me of speaking nonsense. But
in the late eighties I stumbled on Micahel Polyani's book "The Tacit
Dimension" and I recognised with great pleasure another person who thought
in the same manner.
To articulate with words (or express by any other means like music) one's
tacit knowledge is difficult, but ONLY in the sense of how walking is
difficult for a baby who has never walked before. Once the baby has learnt
to walk, it becomes easier. It took me about four years to become fluent
to articulate my own tacit knowledge and then approximately another four
to recognise the tacit knowledge of another person by "reading between the
lines".
>Perhaps this is to do with my background. I am an indigenous
>New Zealander one of a family of 13 born into poverty. We had
>honest hard working parents who gave us a good start in life by
>way of education.
I think that background and especially the beliefs in it have very much to
do with the ability to articulate one's tacit knowledge. For example, all
over the world the far majority of people believe that knowledge is
outside a person and that learning is causes that knowledge to diffuse
into a person's mind where it has to be memorised. I also believed it up
to 1971. Then I began to wonder. In 1982-83 I began to discover. Now I
know that it is only half of the story. That which exists outside a person
is information. The knowledge inside a person feeds upon this information
to increase extensively (quantitatively). This is mainly what KM is about.
But what is the other half of the story? The intensive (qualitative)
increase of knowledge is born (emerged) within a person.
>By the time I was born (1948) the Maori people had also lost
>much of their pride and though recognizing tacit knowledge and
>with unimpaired "becoming-being" (liveness) and
>"identity-categoricity" (sureness) were not able to collectively
>teach a deaf audience.
Dennis, with these few word above you articulate the phlight of more than
a billion people all over the world.
The mute trying to teach the deaf! What a tragedy!
>In the context of "How does a Nation learn", I believe that our
>tiny nation did learn. Not without some bitter confrontation
>between the government and the Maori people though. The
>most bitter and probably the changing point in government
>thinking was the 1981 South African Rugby tour to New Zealand.
For our fellow learners -- this happened at the zenith of the apartheid
era. On the one hand most people wanted rugby to be played -- the national
sport of both South African and New Zealand. Forget about apartheid and
play rugby. On the other hand some people wanted the problem of racism to
be solved, thinking it to be more important. Sport versus non-racism --
what an entropic force! Add the flux of people taking action and immense
entropy gets produced.
>That event stunned and divided the country. Activist Maori
>groups used it fully to further the fight for justice. Never before
>had we seen such violence in our streets. Never was opinion
>so divided.
It is a fine articualtion of the first manifestation of entropy, namely
chaos (diversity of becoming). Step up the entropy production and the
system moves to the edge of chaos where bifurcations happen.
>I believe that it was this event that finally convinced the
>government that a process to right the wrongs of the past was
>desperately needed.
Aha, the bifurcation resulted into an emerge for many, including the
government. There cannot be peace and prosperity in a country when one or
more of its peoples became disempowered.
>Hopefully the process will sufficiently satisfy all New Zealanders
>enough to enable "all" of us to focus on building the future for
>New Zealand. I am keeping a close watch on the seven
>essentialities postings as well. When I get a sufficient
>understanding of them I will look at our direction in terms of it
>satisfying all seven of them.
Dennis, forget about the "hopefully". The bifurcations will result more
and more into destructive immergences unless your nation go beyond its
present TACIT UNDERSTANDING of the seven essentialities (liveness,
sureness, wholeness, fruitfulness, spareness, otherness and openness).
It is very important to understand that hope itself, like happiness and
curiosity, is one of the adjoints of emergences. It means that emergences
create hope, but also that hope alone cannot sustain emergences.
>Seemingly what we still have to learn pales into insignificance
>against the problems faced by South Africa, Russia, Yugoslavia,
>Indonesia and many more. And there is no guarantee that we
>will escape, what is going on now in many countries, in our future.
>The 1981 Springbok tour allowed us to see the depths to which
>our hatred can go.
Of one thing I am now sure -- without national learning (a learning nation
which inlcudes all its peoples) the future of a nation becomes bleak.
>At, I have had contact with South African people since early
>childhood as they immigrated to New Zealand. I now work with
>them and associate with them in community organizations.
>There seems to be a gulf between how they and I think.
Dennis, please have patience with them and us. We South Africans still
have a lot to learn about nationhood. Since the nation is a very complex
organisation, this learning happens very slowly. Bearing in mind what I
have written at the beginning, a great stumbling block is that we believe
this learning is merely a process of diffusion and retention. If this is
true, then where is the learning nation from which we can soak up
knowledge on the nation?
>We were not particularly pleased that she had picked South
>Africa as the country she wished to spend her year as an
>exchange student but she had set her heart on going there.
>She has been there for almost three months now and is
>thoroughly enjoying herself.
Parents who love and care for their children are the same all over the
world. What will become of our child in a dangerous country?
South Africa is an exceptional laboratory for learning in its widest
sense. But it requires people committed to learning to make use of its
potential as a learning laboratory. A few years from now your daughter
will thank you and your wife for what you have meant to her.
If your daughter ever comes close to Pretoria, tell her to come and visit
our family.
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>