This is a tough-love message to At deLange. You no longer have ANY
credibility with me. As much as I want to learn from your thinking, as
much as I want to believe your conclusions, as much as I want the joy of
being challenged by your ideas -- I cannot trust you. So you have
effectively shut me off from the pleasure and benefit I could have derived
from dialogue with you.
Here's just the most recent reason why I have reached this unfortunate
conclusion. You write:
>Since from 1048-1994
> apartheid = NOT wholeness
>we have since 1994
> NOT apartheid = NOT NOT wholeness
>
>The Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) says that
> NOT NOT statement = statement
>Thus we expect according to LEM that
> NOT NOT wholeness = wholeness.
None of the apartheid/wholeness statements are true as statements of
logic!! So of course you are able to reach a false conclusion when you
begin with false premises! You begin with the premise that there is an
IDENTITY between apartheid and NOT wholeness ("apartheid = NOT
wholeness.") That's false. That statement would only be true if
everything that is "NOT wholeness" were "apartheid." I can give hundreds
of examples but the general principle is that "X does not equal Y" is not
the same statement as "X equals NOT Y."
What you could defend is something like "apartheid does not equal
wholeness." I would agree that that statement is true. But if you had
started from there you couldn't derive the conclusion you wanted to reach
-- so you started falsely.
I keep asking myself, "What kind of person is it who wants so much to
influence others that he would resort to almost any kind of trickery to do
so?" I'm afraid that all of my answers are rather unflattering.
Perhaps it is time for you to do some self-reflection. Do you have so
little trust in your own conclusions that you cannot present them fairly
and honestly but always have to puff them up with rhetorical tricks and
false premises and the use of a hundred words when ten would be clearer?
I suspect that this message will give Rick some problems because it isn't
the polite kind of dialogue he (rightly) expects of us. But I'm very
angry with you, At, for making it impossible for me to listen to you any
more. And I'm far from alone on this list in my frustration, according to
many off-list messages.
It simply is wrong to do what you so often do and I wish to God you'd stop
it so I can begin listening, and dialoguing, with you again.
John W. Gunkler
jgunkler@sprintmail.com
[Host's Note: Yes, John, I'm sorry to see this, but I'd rather you speak
up than retreat to quiet silence. I believe that someone or something is
being mis-understood here.
At has replied on this thread in the meantime, and I believe he is now off
to the desert and will be absent for a while. ..Rick]
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>