Dear Organlearners,
Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> writes:
>Bill, and others, the idea I expressed is from Peter Senge;
>he often talked about this it in speeches a year or so ago.
>
>He goes on, saying roughly, "So, empowerment cannot come
>from another human being. If someone else empowers you,
>they could take it away, so you aren't truely empowered. True
>empowerment can only come from an idea.
Greetings Rick,
The reason why we struggle so much with "true empowerment" is that it is
an emergent phenomenon. We know little about emergent phenomena.
Emergent phenomena is the result of irreversible (i.e entropy producing)
self-organisation. That is why "true empowerment" comes from within.
According the the grammar rules of English, we should have called "true
empowerment" by "expowerment". In my own language Afrikaans we distinguish
between "gemagtig" (power from the outside) and "bemagtig" (power from
within). We also have the word "ontmagtig" (losing power). The English
word for this should have been "dispower", but now we have to use
"disempower".
Whereas "true empowerment" comes from within, "disempowerment" is usually
"triggered" from the outside. It happens when the environement produces so
much entropy that the the self-organising system fails to manage this
extra entropy when the system becomes inundated by it. I used "triggered"
because the cause also lies within the self-organising system itself. It
cannot act towards a constructive emergence when the bifurcation point at
the edge of chaos is reached. In stead the system experiences a
destructive immergence. Its cause is the impairing of one or more of the
essentialities of creativity.
In order to become "truely empowered", we need to learn emergently. Very
little emergent learning takes place in traditional education. Why?
Consider the essentiality wholeness. The opposite of wholeness is
fragmentation. Emergent learning without wholeness is impossible. How much
wholeness is there in our educational curricula? How much emergent
learning can we expect when our educational curricula are so fragmented?
Thus we should forget about "true empowerment" if we want to ignore
wholeness.
Emergent learning is not only important for Learning Individuals (LI), but
also for Learning Organisations (LO). Without emergent learning the
members of a LO cannot obtain the results which they truely desire -- that
is, if they desire happiness, curiosity, hope and love. These things do
not merely exist -- they appear as adjoints when emergences happen.
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>