>In terms of my own viewpoint I wonder how you generate the free energy to
>keep on reading what does not seem to make sense to you. I myself would
>fell fast asleep after the first few paragraphs. In terms of your
>viewpoint -- I admire your guts. I easily fell asleep in church during a
>service when the pastor, as we would say in Afrikaans, "gorrel"
>(literally in English "gurgle").
I continue to read you for the same reasons you continue to read me! And I
reply to you for the same reasons you reply to me!
...snip...
>Then comes many moons of finding guts wherever to demonstrate that they
>can follow their choice all the way. Some succeed, but others (using your
>metaphor of an automobile) find their batteries flat and fuel tanks empty
>-- no study any more. Some of them by "strange coincidences" cross my
>path and then it becomes my task to coach them back into spontaneous
>learning.
It "becomes your task" as it "becomes my task": we are trying, both of us,
to coach the other into spontaneous learning: and to date neither one of
us is succeeding in changing the mind of the other!
You continue to believe that you have "discovered" the "essentialities,"
rather than that you have constructed them with language; and you continue
to believe that Prigogine's phyicalist vocabulary of "entropy" and
"bifurcation" and "self-organization" can be translated into the world of
human relations--so I have not succeeded in coaching you into spontaneous
learning!
>Steve, European culture have not yet learned how to connect effectively
>with even the "indaba". But typical of "European time", they jump to the
>next stages of what you have so beautifully articulated as "discussion"
>and "debate". And with that very behaviour they loose all those following
>"African time" along the way. Eventually things go the European way. But
>the past couple of decades Africa rose up ("uhuru") against it, trying to
>regain the African way and still competing with the European way. The
>result? A total disaster in synchronisation and harmony as you all
>know.
Let me try, At, to coach you into looking at what you are doing here.
You are seeming to endorse dialogue and "indaba".
What I think you are also doing is this:
You are endorsing "indaba" as a way of contesting my position on
discussion and debate.
I think you are discussing and debating with me, Western style--and very
skillfully!
>Thus I have immense respect for your desire to go to "discussion" and
>"debate" in specifically the LO framework. But I think that we will need
>much dialogue (the "indaba" type, i.e free of "discussion" and "debate"
>to do so). Why? Because "dialogue" (indaba type) on the one hand and
>"discussion"- "debate" on the other hand are two completely different
>things. The "dialogue" (indaba type) is inherently complex with focus on
>the implicate while the "discussion"&"debate" is almost simplistic
>because of focussing on that which has been articulated. If your do not
>believe me, just try to make your point in a debate by telling your
>opponents that your intuition tells you that you are right.
Sweetly, gently, kindly: you are piling up points, as we say: you are a
skilled debater!
>In other words, the difference in European time and African time has,
>among other things, very much to do with the "measurement problem" of
>quantum mechanics on which I have written some time ago. Thus it is not
>strange that of all people it was David Bohm who became so sensitive to
>the importance of the dialogue (indaba type) because of his full
>knowledge (experential, tacit, formal and sapient) of quantum mechanics.
>However, I perceive something deeper than Bohm and will later on comment
>on it.
Once again you demonstrate the need to move the vocabulary of the physical
sciences into the world of human relations...
(snip joke on paradigm shift)
...snip...
>Furthermore, I am able to explain, describe and predict it in terms of
>"entropy production" and its related concepts. This gives me the
>advantage to understand that "discussion" and "debate" will come
>automatically -- we need not promote it. What I have to care for, is the
>"open-complex dialogue" and put as much into it as is possible for me. My
>family cries for my attention and many of you fellow learners cry that it
>frustrates you. I cry because I cannot visit the deserts as I used to.
At, I do not believe there is any evidence that you can describe, explain
or predict what will happen to Microsoft, or South Africa, or East Timor
or or Israel, or Ireland, by moving the concepts of "entropy" and such
notions as "bifurcation" and "self-organising" out of their home in
physics and into these arenas of human struggle. That is my reason for
trying to coach you, just as you are trying to coach me into believing
that the seven essentialities will help me to describe, explain, and
predict one I truly understand them, and master their use.
>We have a saying in my language "van lekker lag kom lekker huil" (from
>nice laughing comes nice crying). Many of us here in the New South Africa
>are discovering something much deeper -- from crying together comes
>lauging individuals who wipe off the tears from each other's cheecks
>through the spirit of love. This happens in "open-complex dialogue". I
>wish I could experience it happening in "discussion" and "debate". I have
>followed the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
>headed by Desmond Tutu as closely as possible. Whenever the "discusson"
>and "debate" phases took over, the tears dried up, not because somebody
>else wiped them off through unconditional love, but because of anger and
>hurt caused by such "discussions" and "debate" taking over. >>
Again I point out to you, At, that what you have done is: a)engage in a
lengthy discussion; and b)continue a skillful debate with me.
And that is fine with me!
And I need to grapple with your points as you make them, in ordinary non
physicalist language.
As I look at what you have written, I do not find that such conepts as
"entropy" help me to understand your motives, or your thinking, or the
structure of your arguments.
Nor do I think your well crafted discussion is "self organising."
At organised it!
Be well, At.
Steve Eskow
--Steve Eskow <dreskow@corp.webb.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>