Dear Organlearners,
Bob Janes <bob.janes@webster-and-janes.co.uk> writes:
>The other 20% were sent by just three people with 92, 127, and
>129 messages respectively. And no, At is not top of this list, that
>place goes to John Gunkler with Winfried taking the bronze.
>
>At does though win on words. In the last six months he has posted
>some 193,000 words to the list -- around three average novels. He
>mentioned 'learning' 648 times, 'energy' 600, 'system' 585, 'entropy'
>470, 'time' 452, 'people' 449, 'thinking' 356, 'knowledge' & 'change'
>355 each, 'example' 349, and 'creativity' 339 times. This seems to
>me to represent a fair set of criteria for a learning organisation.
>
>Apart from a little whimsy this is an offer of a small piece of
>feed-back to the list which may -- or may not -- result in some
>change in behaviour and thus some learning in this particular
>organisation.
Greetings Bob,
Thank you very much for the statistics!
In any ranking somebody has to be on the one end of the list and somebody
else on the other end. As for the volume of my writing, it seems as if I
top the list. As for the quality of it, that is another question!
Why did I write so much?
First of all, I believe that HUMANKIND will need ALL the help it can get
to make a worthy living in the next century and millenium. I humbly hope
that my own writing will be a worthwhile contribution to this cause. If I
am guilty of writing too much for this reason, then I gladly accept any
punishment.
Yes, I am guilty of writing too much, but in another sense. We all seem to
be deluged by information. I contributed in quantity far more than average
to this deluge. But this is just the beginning of the deluge. The greater
the content (quantity) of information, the more important it will become
to us to get hold of the form (qualities) of such information. But what
is the form we have to seek in such content to increase our viability?
I am a South African. South Africans have experienced vast changes in
content and form on all walks of life the last ten years. These changes
are but a foreshadowing of the paradigmatic transformation which the rest
of humankind will experience sooner or later. The sad thing is that most
South Africans eagerly awaited such vast changes, but were not spiritually
prepared to manage it. Consequently, when the changes came, many South
Africans reacted far too often destructively for NOT KNOWING BETTER. It
still happens today
The rest of the world promised many kinds of help to South Africans after
they have transformed their future. But South Africans had to experience
that very little of those pretty words would be honoured. South Africans
needed and will need one thing more than anything else to manage this vast
change effectively. This was not even promised by the rest of the world,
nor will it be delivered -- LEARNING. When the rest of humankind will also
become agonised by the looming vast changes, it will be the same. Like
most South Africans, most of them will not even know that this
paradigmatic transformation could have been less destructive because of
knowing better. May they discover the power of learning before it is too
late.
Many of you may believe that the vast changes will effect other countries,
but not yours so that need not prepare yourself by learning. I cannot and
will not change your belief. But I can beg you to question this believe
seriously and learn from your questioning. Do that questioning as
creatively as possible otherwise you will waste your free energy (time)
and learn nothing. Use things pertaining to creativity to aid your
questioning. The seven essentialities of creativity can guide you.
For example, how will it be possible for your country to escape the
tribulation when the wholeness of the whole earth is at stake? How will
it be possible for you and your family to side step the tribulations which
your fellow country people will experience? Is it really possible to
engineer this exception so that you can keep on thinking exclusively? The
great majority South Africans of all kinds participating in all kinds of
organisations believed that once apartheid has been removed, they will be
given the exceptional and exclusive treatment. It happened to a few
leaders, but for the vast majority of people at the roots level it was
wishful thinking.
What will cause this paradigmatic transformation? Aha, some
complexiologists may begin to argue that cause-effect plays a minor, if
any, role in complexity. But these very complexiologists deny emphatically
the possibility that complexity is the grand effect with entropy
production as its primordial cause. Deny entropy production and you have
to deny whatever follows from it, even the concept of free energy.
Every complex transformation, if not all transformation, has to be
triggered. A free energy wall bars the beginning from the end. All living
organisms make use of triggers (catalysts, enzymes, keys) to lower that
wall and thus transform effectively. The coming paradigmatic
transformation of unprecedented complexity will be triggered in the
physical or the spiritual world. If it is not triggered in good time in
the spiritual world, then it will be triggered in the physical world
because of our ignorance. How will the trigger in the physical world work?
Our world-wide sources of non-renewable energy are being depleted at a
rate faster than the rate of HIV infection. (Actually, we must think in
terms of free energy rather than energy. We must also think in terms of
the time needed to make a renewable source available.) We spend at least
70% of our income to have physical free energy available -- the fuel in
our cars, the electricity in our mains, the food and household goods we
have to buy which each requires free energy to have changed its
composition and form, engineering (technology) like roads, buildings,
warfare munition, taxes we pay because goverment people offfers their
services so that they also can buy free energy in some or other form. In
the remaining 30% income we spend most of it to gain spiritual free energy
-- training, consulting, religion, amusement, holidays, hobbies, etc.
When we have used up all these non-renewable sources of energy, there will
be no more. Then the bank manager (Law of Free Energy needed for Work,
/_\F < W ) will call us in and say: "You have used up all the credit by
gained by life through millions of years. You are now insolvent. You will
have to rehabilitate yourself with a completely new way of life." It is in
such times that we will need spiritual free energy as never before.
However, this we also have squandered because of educational, economical
and political systems which destroy the creativity of people. In other
words, we will all be very poor in free energy, phyiscally and spiritually
when we need it most.
I have avoided this message of gloom as much as possible. I rather tried
to give you as much as possible of the accounting tools so that you can do
the accounting job yourself and thus avoid the bank manager calling you
in. I have shown you how to use these tools and I am sure that once you
begin to use some of them, your natural creativity will assist you to
invent your own. The point is, do not delay in acting upon your gut
feeling because entropy production, time and creativity are intimately
related. Do not think that your organisation is powerful enough to skip
the reckoning day.
The second reason why I wrote so much, is to bring you a message of good
hope and not merely bad tidings. I do know how much time I still have to
live and neither do anyone of you know when you will be dead. But what we
all know, is that we have to use the free energy available wisely because
time follows its own creative course. My message is not only that we have
to change vastly in order to sustain ourselves, but to show you how
complex that vast changes will have to be. I have made it and I am still
alive.
I wish I had the poetic talent to draw a complex picture with a few words.
When a picture is so complex that it includes all of reality, how many
words do we need to draw the entire picture? From a scientific point of
view, the more complex a phenomenon becomes, the more complex its mental
image also become. Take chemistry as an example. In chemistry we study the
organisation of matter, i.e. the change of form from microscopic to
macroscopic levels. Ask any student how mind boggling the complexity of
merely chemistry is. The present chemical abstracts of one week alone are
far more voluminous than all my contributions to this list for several
years.
Chemistry plays a unique role in all the other sciences (physics geology,
biology, engineering, technology, etc.) of the material world. In other
words, chemistry is the central science to the material world. But
chemistry is also a science which has to reckon with the complexity of the
material world. So what is the counterpart of chemistry to the sciences of
the abstract world, the world of mind rather than the world of brain?
Furthermore, will that central science have to reflect the complexity of
the spiritual world as chemistry has to reflect the complexity of the
physical world?
That central science of the mind is "learning" -- the most underestimated
of all sciences in the abstract world. I do not use the names didactics
(science of teaching), education (science of upbringing) or knowledge
management because we have to focus on the act of learning. The "act" upon
which all chemistry is focused, is the chemical reaction. The chemical
reaction changes the material organisation structure/composition) of the
reactants into that of the products. Likewise learning changes the
organisation of the mind from ignorance to knowledge.
>From 1968 to 1971 I learnt how complex soils are and how little the
traditionally fragmented subjects like chemistry enabled me to master some
of the complexity of soils. I discovered that irrversible thermodynamics
(science of entropy production) is the most powerful tool to deal with the
complexity of soils. Late in 1971 my mentor Phillip warned me that the
complexity of soils is not a patch against the complexity of learning. Six
months later I had sufficient experiences in teaching to get an idea of
what he meant.
Since 1971 the following paradox had been my tormentor. Learning and its
outcome are complex. The far majority of learners, although willing to
concede that life is complex, do not want to accept and thus deal with the
complexity of learning. This intimidation of learning by complexity is
profound because it destroys the free energy (motivation) of learning.
Despite this intimidation of complexity on learning, the knowledge of
humankind on learning increases steadily. For many it may seem to be only
another management gimmick, but the articulation of the concept of
Learning Organisation is perhaps the greatest single accomplishment on
understanding learning this millenium. The ramification of this concept in
all facets of learning will be tremendous. The same happened in chemistry.
Its development, up to 1898, was slow compared to the other sciences. But
since the discovery of the electron, a fundamental particle, the evolution
of chemistry surpassed that of all other sciences. The LO concept will
help similarly to accelerate the evolution of learning.
However, the actual key to this acceleration will be creativity. Not a
simplistic image of creativity or even a caricature of it, but a thorough
understanding of complexity in creativity and vice versa. Such a thorough
understanding of creativity and its complexity should give a clear account
of the relationship between creativty and learning.
I intend to reduce much of the volume of my writing. The excellent LO
archives bear witness to the eagerness and joy with which I have played my
role. I have been neglecting many other things in my life which cannot go
on forever.
Finally, I had been struggling for more than 25 years to find the key to
the development of Namaqualand, one of the poor and arid regions in the
west of South Africa. With every visit there, I felt something knocking
inside me, calling for recognition. I tried to open the door of my
creativity, but my blindness persisted. I knew tacitly that I had to see
something vitally important, but I was struck with blindness. A couple of
months ago the dream finally emerged of how that wasteland can be
transformed into a paradise.
The ramifications of this vision itself is very complex and will need much
of my attention. The details of the vision is not of importance here,
except that for two nights I could not sleep because of excitement. But
one thing I do want to mention. Soon afterwards I began to question
myself why my search for this vision was fruitless for 25 long years. I
found the answer. I was not thinking WHOLEsome enough. There was a
slight, but decisively important form of "apartheid" (geographical
fragmentation) which I subscribed to as with all other people concerned
with the future of Namaqualand.
Once again I can say with confidence -- if you lack in vision or lament
the incapacity of others to share a vision, check on the seven
essentialities of creativity. Some impairing in at least one of them will
be the culprit, preventing the emergence of the visions needed. In my case
it was wholeness. Winfried Dressler reckons that wholeness is the
essentiality most impaired among people of the Western Civilisation. I
find it difficult, is not impossible, to disagree with him.
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>