In dealing with organizations that don't share a similar world view, how
does one stay true to one's own belief system and facilitate maximum
learning space?
As an Episcopal priest, involved in creating LOs in the church setting,
I'm fascinated by Arun's interjections and the style of his last two
postings, which I perceive as philosophical quotations of a religious
nature. Owning my bias, my shields came up, imputing more to Arun's
offering than just the surface response. Glen is much more circumspect
than I in his response about a different world view. Were I to respond I
would probably respond with a Christian scripture illustrating my
different world view, which more closely corresponds to Glen's offering
than Arun's.
I've also appreciate a posting by another consultant asking for resources
on how to make sense of a Muslim's world view to appropriately frame
change transactions. These cross cultural challenges (in this case
religious, but in others it could be ethnic or economic, etc.) seem to me
to apply in greater or lesser degree in every creation of a LO.
To debate ((dialogue, discuss, whatever we call it.) world views vis-a-vis
religion is certainly more appropriate for some other venue. ("A
rose/evangelism by any other name,. . .) But here's my question relative
to LOs.
Does the style in which we interact validate the content, or is it the
other way around?
Here I'm trying to think systemically about the whole spectrum of the LO
listserv and its multitude of threads. I read with fascination the
whirlpools created by entropists' desire to "evangelize." At a minimum to
get us to at least include entrophy as a facet of our world views, and
probably-at best from that perspective-for it to become our central
content organizing position. The exploration of "love" was challenging,
etc.
My style of creating learning space is often similar to what I perceived
Arun's to be. The style borrows a lot from Zen koans, which are often-when
chosen well-mind blowing in their triggers for learning. I normally work
in a relatively closed environment (from a systems perspective not
religious mind-set.) That is to say at this point all my clients fairly
closely share my particular world view, and so I use Christian content for
the koans I create. But they are koans none-the-less.
What are the boundaries, and how are they created, when the style becomes
counter-productive to the learning organization experience? Or is that
restricted perspective. This whole question of "openness" and "infinite
shades of grey" is being played out on another listserv I'm on in terms of
a discussion about "traditional vs. modern vs. postmodern vs millenial"
world views.
I sat for a while trying to think of a summation for my extended and
rambling dissertation. Finally I've decided to just quit and see if
there's something constructive in the vagueness that generates response.
At 02:02 PM 11/22/1999 EST, Glen wrote:
>In a message dated 11/22/99 10:55:06 AM Pacific Standard Time,
>tripathi@statistik.uni-dortmund.de writes:
>
>> A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act
>> as
>> if it is real, so he escapes the suffering. --Buddha (B.C. 568-488)
>
>Unless...Unless...that illusion creates wonderful and fulfilling feelings
>and outcomes one desires...just a thought about how we might want to see
>ourselves and the world...CHOICE
Dick Copeland
San Antonio, Texas
--Dick Copeland <padre@texas.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>